By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 11, 1998; Page B03

In Montgomery County, where soccer is booming and fields are crowded, officials will announce start-up funding this week for a $10 million, 24-field complex in Germantown that they say will host regional tournaments and greatly improve conditions for thousands of county soccer players.

Features will include a new access road from Route 118, water and sewer lines, irrigated fields and a "championship field" built to World Cup standards.

The state will provide $3 million from Project Open Space funds, the county government will provide $1.5 million, and the county's park and planning agency will provide up to $500,000, officials said yesterday. Details about who would own and operate the complex must still be decided. Appropriations would be subject to General Assembly or County Council approval.

Soccer advocates hope to raise an additional $5 million or so from private donors, said Harry Martens III, president of the Maryland SoccerPlex Foundation, which has pursued the goal for months.

The complex, to be part of the South Germantown Recreational Park, west of Gaithersburg, "will provide desperately needed substantial facilities for everyone in the area who plays soccer," Martens said. Soccer in Montgomery, he said, "is growing very fast, at all levels, from the children to the adults." County organizers recently had to reject 12 adult teams because there weren't enough playing fields, he said.

A key advocate of the plan is John S. Hendricks, chairman of the Bethesda-based company that owns the Discovery Channel and other cable outlets. Hendricks, whose children are among the 14,000 participating in Montgomery Soccer Inc., has pledged $250,000 to the project and is offering another $250,000 as a challenge grant to attract more donors, Martens said.

Soccer fans hope to add an indoor facility eventually, he said, but that would require a new funding campaign.

Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan and Gov. Parris N. Glendening, both Democrats, plan to announce their support of the complex this week, aides said. In doing so, they will try to calm area residents' fears that the facility will bring too much traffic.

When the complex was proposed a few years ago, planners anticipated access from narrow Schaeffer Road, which serves residential communities. The new plans call for building an access road from Route 118. "It will avoid all the small, local roads," Martens said.

The project's centerpiece will be a "championship field," with up to 7,500 seats, locker facilities and lights, planners said. It could be the site for major tournament championships and Olympic trials, they said.

The new fields will have high-quality Bermuda grass, irrigation and good drainage, Martens said. They will be significantly better than the county's existing hodgepodge of fields, which often are cramped and dusty or muddy, he said.

If the proposed government financing is approved this year, construction could begin as early as fall, said a county official who did not want to be quoted by name.