Here's why Utah Valley is building one of the best soccer facilities in the country

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This isn't an easy time for any athletic department to build a new facility.

Labor shortages, inflation, interest rate hikes and supply chain disruptions have made construction projects across the country more expensive and more difficult to pull off, leading some programs to postpone projects entirely. The NIL and transfer portal era has also caused some schools to wonder if resources that might previously have gone towards capital projects might be better deployed elsewhere.

Shovels are still going into the ground and buildings are going up across the country, but I've tried to keep a closer eye on what is getting announced and why, since we're not in 2008 anymore. And a recent facilities project announced at Utah Valley University caught my eye.

Late in October, the school announced plans to build a brand new soccer stadium, one that would be one of the most ambitious and modern soccer-specific college stadiums in the entire country. The project includes a capacity of over 3,000, 400 additional chairback seats, plaza seating, an MLS-style press box, and 10 luxury suites.

This would be a nicer facility than most P5 programs currently enjoy...at a school that doesn't exactly have a $100 million operating budget.

Beyond wanting to better understand how Utah Valley plans to pull this off, I wanted to understand why. So I reached out to Dr. Jared Sumsion, the school's athletic director.

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