STORRS, Conn. (AP) – Randy Edsall and his assistant coaches no longer have to meet in a doublewide trailer behind the small 50-year-old building that until this week housed the University of Connecticut football team’s locker room.

The program – which went to a full Division I schedule four years ago, played its first game in the 40,000-seat Rentschler Field stadium in 2003, and won its first bowl game in 2004 – took another large step into the big time this week by opening new $48 million practice facilities. The move comes just in time for the start of practice Friday.

The Burton Family Football Complex and Mark R. Shenkman Training Center houses the coaches’ offices, classrooms, team meeting rooms, locker rooms, medical facilities (including a hydrotherapy room with several hot tubs), a dining hall, equipment room and a lounge.

The 85,000-square-foot Shenkman complex includes a 120-yard indoor practice field and an 18,000-square-foot state-of-the art weight room and training facility. Both buildings include high-tech video and computer capabilities.

“If there is anybody in the country that has anything better than this then I’ll have to go see it,” Edsall said. “To be able to have everything right here, really in the middle of our campus, that a football student athlete needs – from academic support to eating to training to lifting to meeting rooms – everything is right here.”

The complex was paid for with $31 million in state bond funds from the 21st Century UConn program, the second phase of the school’s massive building project, and with private donations to the athletic department.

The Shenkman center also will be used by other UConn athletic teams and for recreational and intramural programs, said Mike Enright, a UConn spokesman.

But it is primarily a state-of-the art football facility, which Edsall said will be key in recruiting topflight athletes.

“We have won on the field, we do have the stadium,” Edsall said. “The last thing that we really needed here was facilities to go out and compete against all the teams that we are competing against – not just in the Big East but throughout all the conferences of the teams that we play in competition for all of those student athletes that each of us are recruiting.”

Construction began in 2004, and the buildings are not finished. The turf has not been laid on the practice field, and workers were still pouring concrete outside the Burton Center this week.

But the school received a temporary certificate of occupancy that allowed the staff and players to move into the buildings Friday.

“We’ve been able to come in here and unpack and be able to get some things started,” Edsall said. “The thing about it is that this is a big project and you want to make sure everything is right.”

AP-ES-08-03-06 1439EDT