ROSEBURG – The Umpqua Community College Board of Education approved the addition of three new sports teams at a meeting Wednesday. Starting next school year, the UCC athletic department will begin fielding a baseball team and men’s and women’s track and field teams.
The new teams will be in addition to the six new sports teams that were added at the beginning of the current school year. The track and field teams will begin competition during the fall of 2018 and will have a roster of 20 men and 20 women.
Baseball will have a roster of 35 athletes, but will delay the start of competition until the fall of 2019. This will allow the team to recruit enough players for a full roster and it will allow enough time for Legion Field to be renovated with an artificial turf surface.
The RiverHawks have been in talks with the Roseburg American Legion about using the Legion Field facilities as a home. To accommodate the number of teams that would use Legion Field on a regular basis, the playing surface will need to be redone.
Once each athletic team has a full roster, athletic director Craig Jackson expects there to be over 200 student-athletes enrolled in full time classes at Umpqua Community College.