As a student who has played for the California Lutheran University Regals soccer team all four years, I have been faced with the issue of not having a field to practice on in the offseason. This hinders the opportunity to better myself as an athlete for the good of my team, and is an ongoing situation amongst the men’s and women’s soccer teams. 

According to Cal Lutheran’s website, there are a total of four fields on campus, including the Angel City Football Club field. Knowing that there are four fields on campus, it is disappointing that we are unable to use our home field for extra training without issue.

Kingsmen soccer player Christopher Pelaez said he remembers a time when he and his teammates could not practice in the stadium because an “outside group” was using the stadium, forcing him to train on Memorial field. 

“I mean a field is a field, but I’d rather train on a better field, especially because [Memorial] has patches and is not as well taken care of as the stadium is,” Pelaez said. 

He said since athletes play and practice on the stadium field during the regular season, they should get first priority to consistently train on that field.

According to The Athletes Village, a blog for athletes, parents, coaches and experts to interact, United States National Team soccer player Julie Foudy said training on your own time translates to more confidence in your abilities on the ball.

I find this statement to hold true for all athletes because, not only is it coming from a three-time Olympian and two-time World Cup Champion, but it also makes sense that when athletes spend the maximum amount of time training, they put themselves at a greater advantage to be a great player.

“I find getting extra playing time so important because without going out there and kicking the ball around, you will lose a lot of skill… overall you are just not benefitting your team by becoming the best possible player you can be,” Logan Duford, a transfer student who plays for the Regals soccer team, said. 

Duford transferred to Cal Lutheran from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and, in her experience, she said field accessibility varies greatly between Cal Lutheran and her past school.

“At UTSA, the field was always available to us, there was never any time where we had to change our practice or I couldn’t get touches because someone was on my field,” Duford said. 

While UTSA is a Division I program, the effort that the university puts in to ensure its athletes have the resources they need to better themselves is obvious. 

In a perfect world, my solution to this problem would be to give the men’s and women’s soccer teams open hours during the offseason so that they have a chance to train on their own without disruption. 

Cal Lutheran should allot at least four hours a day, for at least three days a week for soccer players to train in the William Rolland Stadium during their offseason, and give players card swipe access to the stadium. 

This solution would keep both Cal Lutheran and its athletes happy. The university would still be able to rent the field to groups who are not affiliated with Cal Lutheran, and we, as athletes, would be able to use the field without worrying about being kicked off by a group that is paying. 

Duford said that if money is the main reason Cal Lutheran rents the field out, we should find other ways to raise money, like charging people to watch our games. 

I think this is a great idea because the families of Cal Lutheran soccer players would likely not hesitate to pay a small fee for games if that means our experience as athletes here will be improved. 

Being able to call a field “my field” is something I wish I could say. Fighting hard battles to win a game, being able to defend our home field and creating lifelong memories with my teammates is something that goes hand in hand with the William Rolland Stadium. Being able to take full advantage of that pride and call the field our own as soccer players is what we long for.