Wake Forest Notebook: Soccer team will be without Opara for a while

■ Defender Ike Opara, one of the three returning starters on the Wake Forest men's soccer team, will miss about a month of the season while playing for the U.S. Under-20 team at FIFA's U-20 World Cup in Egypt.

Coach Jay Vidovich said it's likely that Opara, a candidate for the Hermann Trophy Award, could miss four or five games, starting with a home game against Virginia on Sept. 18.

Opara, a junior, anchored the defense that helped Wake Forest reached its third straight College Cup last fall and also scored five goals, including two winners. He was voted the ACC defensive player of the year in 2008.

The Deacons will play their final exhibition game tonight at Furman and will open their regular season Sept. 1, meeting William & Mary at Spry Stadium.

"We've grown since our Liberty game," Vidovich said of a 2-0 preseason win. "That's all you can hope for is to continue to grow. Our guys are picking up on things pretty well."

■ Golf coaches Dianne Dailey and Jerry Haas can barely contain their smiles these days as the on-campus Jesse Haddock Center nears completion of the first phase of its upgrade. The practice area for the women's and men's teams has been expanded after the removal of the baseball stadium.

"It now will include about 18 acres," Dailey said. "So we're very excited about the way it's shaping up."

Arnold Palmer, who will turn 80 next month, is using his design company to oversee some of the construction.

A part of the practice area will feature five greens built in the styles of different course architects.

"One of them will be shaped like a Donald Ross green, for example," Dailey said. "And we'll also have a modern green such as a Tom Fazio or an Arnold Palmer green. That way we can practice for any kind of course we might be playing in an upcoming tournament."

Haas said that the upgrades will help recruiting.

"With this, we'll hopefully be on all the top players' list," Haas said. "We'll get those one or two extra guys that will make a difference on your team.

"It's going to be a great addition to the golf programs."

■ Wake Forest, in an effort to cut costs in the athletics department, will no longer print media guides for Olympics sports. The decision will save about $40,000 a year, said Steve Shutt, an assistant athletics director for media relations.

The school will continue to print media guides for football and men's and women's basketball.

"A number of schools are now doing all the prepress work for guides in the Olympics sports and making them into PDF's then putting them on their Web sites," Shutt said.

"We just don't feel the value is there to do that because we don't feel like somebody is going to down-load an 80-page media guide."

The sports-information staff will promote programs in different ways, with more videos and question-and-answer segments on the athletics Web site.

"We just think it's a better use of our time because prospective athletes will go to our Web site to learn all about our sports," Shutt said.

■ This ‘n' that: The women's field hockey team is ranked No. 2 in the National Field Hockey Coaches Association's preseason poll, behind Maryland, the defending ACC and NCAA champion. The Deacons finished 22-4 last season and were runner-ups in the ACC and NCAA championships. The Deacons will open Saturday at Iowa…. Brendan Gielow, a senior on the men's golf team, will miss next month's first fall tournament while playing for the United States in Walker Cup matches Sept. 12-13 at Merion Golf Course in Pennsylvania. The Deacons will play at the Carpet Capital Classic in Rocky Face, Ga., the same weekend. "I think Brendan is going to have to be our leader this year," Haas said…. The volleyball team will open its season Friday in the Deacon Invitational at Reynolds Gym. Last season, Coach Heather Kahl Holmes led the Deacons to a 19-13 finish (10-10 ACC) and a program record for ACC wins. Six starters will return. "The ACC finished sixth overall in the country out of 30-plus conferences last season," Holmes said. "We had three teams in the NCAA Tournament last year, and we are looking to add a few more to that list."