Headquarters and training camps

During the Seahawks' first ten seasons (1976–85), the team's headquarters was at Carillon Point on the shores of Lake Washington. The summer training camps were initially held at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, just southwest of Spokane. When the team's new headquarters across town in Kirkland were completed in 1986, the Seahawks held training camp at home for the next eleven seasons (1986–96), staying in the dormitories of the adjacent Northwest College. In Dennis Erickson's third season as head coach, the team returned to the hotter and more isolated Cheney in 1997, where they held training camp through 2006. In 2007, training camp returned to their Kirkland facility, because of the scheduled China Bowl game that was later canceled. In 2008, the Seahawks held the first three weeks of camp in Kirkland, then moved to the new 19-acre (92,000 sq yd) Virginia Mason Athletic Center (VMAC) on August 18 for the final week of training camp. The new facility, adjacent to Lake Washington in Renton, has four full-size practice fields: three natural grass outdoors and one FieldTurf indoors.^[31]