The Wolverines score a new den

ROCKLIN - No more beat up practice field. No more waiting for grass to recover after a heavy rain. No more scheduling home games to be played at various local high school facilities.For the first time in school history, the Sierra College football team will play its home opener in a new, permanent stadium on Saturday.The stadium, named in honor of Homer "Buzz" Ostrom, Sierra's longtime football coach and athletic director, features an artificial turf field and seating for 1,500 fans."We're really excited about playing our first home game in it," said interim coach Ed Eaton. "Now we can finally call our field home. It's a gorgeous facility. Our sophomores can finally have a home game."The project was scheduled to be completed before the 2005 season, but slow construction forced Sierra to play its home schedule on the road last year.As the result of an earlier study by a traffic engineer, the $6 million project also included the creation of 800 new parking spaces, which has allowed students to enter the campus from Sierra College Boulevard and has eased the traffic flow in nearby neighborhoods, according to director of planning Woodrow Wilson.John Volek, athletic director and dean of physical education at Sierra, said the new stadium has growth potential for an additional 1,500 seats.Youth football teams from Loomis and Rocklin have also expressed interest."The community will definitely benefit," Volek said.Sierra officials hope the new turf facility remedies issues ranging from athlete safety to field drainage and wear."We had an old athletic field that had been used for a long time that was really uneven and beat up," Wilson said. "It was oriented east to west, so the sun was always in the eyes of one team, which is unsafe. We had problems with the grass getting beat down and having to have time to recover."Sierra opened its season in Redding last weekend by defeating Shasta College 38-30 in a triple-overtime thriller."It was a unique game," said Eaton, a longtime defensive coordinator who took over for the departed Jeff Tisdel. "I felt like I went from age 34 to 44 in a matter of three hours."Tisdel stepped down after an impressive five-year stint during which Sierra went 52-13 and won four bowls and three Golden Valley Conference championships. On Saturday, the Wolverines will host Sacramento City College, a team Sierra has beaten in consecutive years. The game should serve as an early test for Sierra, which doesn't begin conference play until Oct. 14. Sacramento City College is fresh off a 21-20 season-opening win over Butte College."It will be an electrifying way to open the new stadium," Eaton said. "It will be like Florida against Florida State."Then, on Sept. 16, the Wolverines will travel to take on Feather River, the team that ended Sierra's 37-game winning streak late last season."Last year, playing at all the high school fields was just an opportunity to play college football," Eaton said. "Now we can provide a home environment for these sophomores and our young freshmen to see what it's really like."Before Saturday's game, Sierra College will hold a stadium dedication ceremony to honor Ostrom, who died in 1997.Ostrom transformed a program that had finished with a losing record for 12 consecutive seasons into the GVC champions in 1958, and served as head football coach for two decades."He was a fantastic human being," Volek said. "He was passionate about helping students grow. It's a big honor to dedicate (the stadium) to him."The ceremony is scheduled for 12:30 p.m., with kickoff slated to follow at 1 p.m.