OL Reign partners with Bellarmine Prep to share practice field
.jpg "The OL Reign practice at Bellarmine High School on Tuesday, April 13, 2021.")
Megan Rapinoe and her teammates will be practicing at Bellarmine Preparatory School for a while.
The OL Reign — the Tacoma-based professional women’s soccer team — recently formalized an agreement with Bellarmine to lease a field in the Bowl, the school’s track and field and practice complex.
One of the top teams in the National Women’s Soccer League, the Reign will continue to play their home games at Cheney Stadium. But they will also have access to Bellarmine’s field from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The Lions will use the facility for after-school athletic programs.
“We’re a member of this community and that’s important to us,” said Bellarmine athletic director Kevin Meines. “We want to be a great partner to this community. Having a professional women’s soccer team inside of Tacoma is a badge of honor. That’s something that benefits the whole community.
“If we can help strengthen the Tacoma community, we want to take every opportunity to do that. For us, it was can we make this work for both sides to make sure that we keep women’s professional soccer inside of Tacoma.”
Former Bellarmine athletic director Ed Ploof connected Meines with the wife of a former principal, who was assisting the Reign with their search for a practice facility. The Reign were looking for a natural grass field, which the Lions could offer. The Reign and Bellarmine then held several Zoom calls to exchange information.
“For us, it was a great opportunity number one to help keep women’s professional sports in Tacoma,” Meines said. “That was an initial driver. We have a facility that during the times that they needed to train, it’s the off-time of when we would be using that facility. They came out and we had a few meetings about here’s what we can offer. They came back with, ‘Here’s what we’re looking for.’”
As part of the agreement, the field was stripped, leveled and re-turfed. New irrigation and renewed drainage upgraded it to a professional-quality grass field. The Reign helped fund the project, while the Names Family Foundation offered a $50,000 grant to cover Bellarmine’s portion of the cost. The project won’t impact the school’s operational budget.
The work on the field took about a month, followed by a resting period to allow the new turf to root-in.
“It improves the quality of that playing surface and also it’s part of our mission as a school — we are a Catholic school, we’re educating kids for college and for success in life — but we’re also an important community member for Tacoma and Pierce County,” said Bellarmine president Rob Modarelli.
“This is, to my mind, part of that role in the community in helping this professional sports team have a home here in Tacoma and be able to do what they need to do in order to be successful and give Tacoma fans a team to support. If there’s a facility that we have that we are able to lend to support a larger civic cause like that, I’m happy to do it.”
The training field is less than 5 minutes from Cheney Stadium, and OL Reign CEO Bill Predmore told Ride of the Valkyries, an OL Reign blog on SB Nation, that the club would continue to use its existing locker rooms and facilities. Players will be transported using shuttle buses.
Bellarmine’s field also offers privacy. Since it’s on the school’s campus and in the bowl, Modarelli said there isn’t high visibility for outside traffic. The Reign still are looking to build their own permanent training facility, Predmore told the blog.
“We’ve been spending a lot of time scouting and evaluating sites, and in some instances looking more at the contract level and doing some initial feasibility work,” Predmore said. “We need to be very thoughtful about it all. The partnership with Bellarmine Prep has provided us with a fantastic short-term solution and has allowed us to take additional time to plan and execute the construction of a training facility that meets our long-term needs.”
The contract with Bellarmine Prep runs through November, but Meines said both the school and the Reign were open to exploring options to extend the partnership.
“Obviously it’s going to have to work for them and it’s going to have to work for us,” Meines said. “We’re going to continue to talk about what we can do to improve that facility for their athletes and for our athletes as well.”
Modarelli said the deal has received strong support from alumni, student-athletes and Bellarmine’s athletic programs. Teams have just started practicing on the field, but Modarelli is hopeful for interaction between the professional and student-athletes as the Reign spend more time at the school.
“We would love to have those opportunities,” Modarelli said. “They’ve obviously got a professional team to run and things that they need to do. They’re being respectful of our needs in terms of the field and what we need for school so we’re going to be very respectful of their requirements, too.
“I think both of us recognize the great opportunities that this proximity creates. It’s a great chance for them to share some of their experience and the excitement of professional women’s athletics with, frankly, young future female athletes that we have here. I’m hopeful and they’ve certainly been receptive to that idea. We just have to figure out what works best.”
