Rhodes Field is set for first ever night games

Between the new bleacher seating and the renaissance of the Penn men's and women's soccer teams, Rhodes Field has seen a lot of action over the last few years.

At 5 p.m. tomorrow, however, something will happen there that has never happened before. When the Quakers women kick off against Cornell, they will begin the first ever night game at the facility.

Instead of being overshadowed by train tracks, Interstate 76 and Franklin Field, the home of Penn soccer will be illuminated by four towering sets of floodlights.

And both Penn women's coach Darren Ambrose and men's coach Rudy Fuller won't have to wonder what it would be like anymore.

"A night game at Rhodes Field -- Rudy and I have joked about that for a long time," Ambrose said.

Both coaches said they are hoping for an improved atmosphere in the stands at night games. The afternoon kickoffs of recent years have often had to compete with students' classes during the week and football games on Saturdays.

Fuller said he hopes the new kickoff times will also draw soccer fans from across the Philadelphia area.

"Playing games on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights are going to allow that strong soccer community to come out and see our games," Fuller said. "Wednesdays at 2:30, Saturdays at 2:30, everybody's got something going on."

When fans arrive at Rhodes Field, they will find a lighting design that had to accommodate a number of unusual factors -- especially the close-in boundaries formed by the train tracks on the west side of the field, the Hollenback Annex on the north side and the stands adjacent to Interstate 76 on the east side.

"The site was a challenge," Penn Athletics Director of Facilities and Operations Dave Bryan said.

To meet that challenge, Bryan and the rest of the Penn athletic department called on perhaps the top company in the stadium lighting industry, Musco Lighting. The Muscatine, Iowa-based firm has designed the lights at a number of top sports stadiums across America, including Shea Stadium in New York, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. and the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Musco has a lot of soccer experience as well. It designed the lighting for the new Major League Soccer stadium in Frisco, Texas, the soccer facility at the University of North Carolina and the Britannia Stadium in Stoke, England.

"Musco's the best, they are the leader in the industry," Bryan said. "They did an outstanding job."

The lights are designed with reflectors on them that will aim the beam towards the field so that they do not distract drivers on the nearby highway.

"They are somewhat like a hood," Bryan said of the reflectors.

While Bryan admitted that he was not involved in the process to gain the necessary building permits from the city, he said that "from everything I understand, the application went pretty smoothly, so [the highway] didn't seem to be an issue."

In addition, the poles are built on top of concrete columns that have been sunk into the ground, instead of the poles themselves being in the ground. Bryan said that it is a standard practice for Musco, and it helped speed up the construction process.

"A majority of the [construction] time really consisted of the fabrication of the poles," which took place in Iowa, Bryan said. "They were only on site for three weeks, between digging the holes, running the conduit and tying into the electoral source."

Bryan declined to say what the cost of building the lights was, but he did agree with Ambrose and Fuller that the Penn soccer program will benefit greatly as a result.

"We have very good soccer teams, and it's unfortunate when they go up against a football game on a Saturday afternoon," he said. "When it's not up against football, we can get the students down there to really appreciate our soccer programs."

The first chance comes tomorrow night.

Lights up at Rhodes - Musco Lighting, which designed the poles, has also built lighting at Shea Stadium and the Rose Bowl. - The lights have special reflectors on them to avoid distracting drivers on nearby Interstate 76. - Builders only needed three weeks to complete the installation.

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