Southern’s facilities upgrades are moving slowly

A.W. MUMFORD STADIUM
COURTESY: SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY AND A&M COLLEGE ATHLETICS 

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana -- The Southern football team’s first practice of preseason camp was moved to the Seymour gymnasium because of thunderstorms.

It was a signal of the nomadic nature that awaited the Jaguars throughout the season.

Coach Dawson Odums tried to work inside of A.W. Mumford Stadium to avoid the uneven surface on the adjacent practice field, but there’s only so much wear and tear that’s tolerable on a surface that not only is the site of Southern’s home football games, but also hosts its soccer games and Southern Lab’s football games.

So it was quickly back to the practice field.

When daylight saving time ended in early November, it became too dark for the Jaguars to hold their late-afternoon practices on the practice field, which doesn’t have lights. So Southern packed up and traveled a few miles to Doug Williams Stadium at the Louisiana Leadership Academy. The lights and field turf there provided a very good practice facility, but traveling to and from campus for a few weeks was a burden.

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