Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SANDY - Thursday afternoon Real Salt Lake President Bill Manning broke ground on a new practice facility that will open in the spring or summer of 2012.
"This is massive, to be honest," said RSL Head Coach Jason Kreis. "In some ways, just from a strictly team point of view, you have to put this right next to the stadium. It's that important to us. We train every single day, we only play games once a week and so to have a training field this close to our stadium and our locker room is going to cut down on the time and the effort that we have to spend on a daily basis in order to get our guys prepared for the matches."
This new field will be built on land owned by America First Credit Union and will be named America First Field. America First Credit Union has been a local partner of RSL since its beginnings in 2005.
"It's a very special day," said Manning as he opened the ground breaking.
America First Field will be located in Sandy - just one mile from Rio Tinto. The grass will be the same as RSL's game day surface, with 110,000 square-feet of natural grass which will be laser-grated to within 1/4-inch.
Sandy City Mayor Tom Dolan welcomed the facility and expressed his excitement.
"This is going to be fun. This is a continuation of what professional soccer is all about in Sandy city. Not only do we have the greatest stadium in the soccer world, but maybe one of the greatest stadiums in the country and the greatest team, no question about that now. And now we're going to have a great practice field here that will add to the green space in our community," said Dolan.
Players also expressed their excitement for the upcoming facility. "It's a great day," said RSL midfielder Kyle Beckerman. "It's going to be great grass and I think it will give us an advantage over other teams and it should maybe provide us with even playing better."
RSL hopes to start utilizing the field for practices as well as RSL Reserve League games by late next spring, pending weather this fall and winter.
RSL currently practices at a facility near Thanksgiving Point in Lehi. All practices are open to the public for fans to come and watch.
"We look forward to watching practices out here next summer," Dolan said.
