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Spotlight: Farewell to Toomey 2

Our old football stadium gets a year's reprieve

By Dave Jones

Last year UC Davis bade farewell to Toomey Field as a football stadium, and this year we are saying farewell all over again, because the campus’s new stadium is not yet finished.

So, call this season “Farewell to Toomey 2.” It is set to start Oct. 14, with the Aggies playing the Central Arkansas Bears at 1:05 p.m.

This two-year-long farewell will be one more thing we remember about Toomey and its 57 years as UC Davis’ football venue. Other memories many of us share include the Aggies’ 20-game winning streak from 1974 to 1977 and the Aggies’ 16-7 home record against Sacramento State in a series now called the Causeway Classic.

Our women's lacrosse team also will be transferring over to the new stadium (the team has been playing on Aggie Field next to the baseball stadium); those team players will inaugurate the field when they play their first home game of the season Feb. 25. But it's not "Too-Too-Toomey, goodbye" for our track athletes, who will continue to use the nearly six-decade-old facility.

You are invited to contribute your personal memories of Toomey Field, perhaps from your student days as a player or as part of the student section, or from your childhood or adult years when the rustle of fall leaves beckoned you to the gridiron at Russell Boulevard and A Street.

We started collecting your Toomey Field memories last year, and now with the farewell extending into this season, we have time to collect more. You are invited to e-mail your memories to Dave Jones, and we will post them to this site. In the meantime, read what people wrote last year to refresh your own memories, learn about the field's namesake and collect some factoids.

On the home page: The UC Davis defense takes the field before its NCAA Division II playoff game against Mesa State (Colorado) in 2000, which the Aggies won 62-18. (Courtesy photo)

Aggie football past and present

Dave Jones is associate editor for the campus faculty-staff newspaper, Dateline UC Davis.