ATCO Field is a
soccer
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
stadium at
Spruce Meadows
Spruce Meadows is a multi-purpose sports facility near Calgary, Alberta built by the Southern family which opened in 1975.
The facility contains an equestrian show jumping complex that comprises . The current president and CEO of Spruce Me ...
in
Foothills County
Foothills County is a municipal district in southern Alberta, Canada adjacent to the south side of Calgary in Census Division No. 6. Despite sharing a common border with the City of Calgary, it does not form part of the Calgary census metropol ...
, Alberta, Canada. It is home to
Cavalry FC
Cavalry Football Club, is a Canadian professional soccer club based in the Calgary metropolitan region of Alberta. The club competes at the top of the Canadian soccer league system in the Canadian Premier League, and plays their home matches a ...
of the
Canadian Premier League
The Canadian Premier League (CPL or CanPL; french: Première ligue canadienne, links=no) is a professional men's Association football, soccer league in Canada. At the top of the Canadian soccer league system, it is the country's primary nationa ...
. The venue (formerly known as Meadows on the Green) also serves as the home for several
equestrian
The word equestrian is a reference to equestrianism, or horseback riding, derived from Latin ' and ', "horse".
Horseback riding (or Riding in British English)
Examples of this are:
* Equestrian sports
*Equestrian order, one of the upper classes i ...
events
spanning two to four weeks per year.
Public transportation to the stadium is available from the
Somerset–Bridlewood CTrain
CTrain (previously branded C-Train) is a light rail rapid transit system in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Most of the network functions as a light metro, though in the free-fare zone that runs through the downtown core the Red and Blue lines oper ...
station.
ATCO Atco or ATCO may refer to:
Businesses
* ATCO, a Canadian diversified company involved in manufacturing, utilities, energy and technologies
** ATCO Electric, a subsidiary of the above company
* Atco (British mower company), a mower manufacturing com ...
, the Canadian corporation from which the stadium gets its name, is also owned by the Southern family.
History
In May 2018, it was announced that the
Southern family had purchased a team in the nascent
Canadian Premier League
The Canadian Premier League (CPL or CanPL; french: Première ligue canadienne, links=no) is a professional men's Association football, soccer league in Canada. At the top of the Canadian soccer league system, it is the country's primary nationa ...
and would begin retro-fitting a portion of Spruce Meadows to construct a stadium for that purpose.
By July of that year, construction of the venue commenced at the "Meadows on the Green" facility, including the construction of a 4,500-seat covered grandstand on the east side and 1,500 seats combined on the north and south ends. The stadium utilizes a modular design which can be easily expanded with demand in the future
and was privately funded.
The team predicted that the stadium experience would be, "one of the most unique professional soccer experiences in Canada—if not the world."
The first match was played at ATCO Field on April 27, 2019, while construction was still ongoing. Cavalry FC beat
Calgary Foothills FC
Calgary Foothills Football Club (CFFC) is a Canadian soccer club based in Calgary, Alberta, that competes in USL League Two (USL2). The club was founded as a youth club in 1972 and joined as a USL2 franchise in 2015. The team plays its home gam ...
of
USL League Two
USL League Two (USL2), formerly the Premier Development League (PDL), is a semi-professional developmental soccer league sponsored by United Soccer Leagues in the United States and Canada, forming part of the United States soccer league syst ...
1–0 in its final preseason
friendly.
On May 4, 2019, Cavalry FC officially opened the stadium in its inaugural CPL match,
an eventual 2–1 victory over
York9 FC
York United Football Club (formerly known as York9 FC) is a Canadian professional soccer club based in Toronto, Ontario. The club competes in the Canadian Premier League and plays its home games at York University's York Lions Stadium.
Histor ...
in snowy conditions.
The drainage and final seating were installed shortly before the inaugural match but the roof over the grandstand was not expected to be fully installed until the end of May 2019 because of record-cold temperatures in the area.
Following the first match at the stadium and prior to the second, Cavalry FC ownership and management scrambled to correct traffic problems which resulted in many fans missing the first half of the premier match. Congestion problems caused by ongoing road construction on
Alberta Highway 22X
Alberta Provincial Highway No. 22X, commonly referred to as Highway 22X, is a highway in and around Calgary in the Canadian province of Alberta, extending to the east from Highway 22. It is concurrent with Stoney Trail (High ...
was identified as the primary cause. As a result, team ownership began offering free shuttles from the nearby public transportation station as a solution.
Prior to the
2021 CPL season, the club announced that it had invested an additional 9 million
CAD
Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...
to add permanent floodlighting to the stadium in addition to resodding the surface. This lighting replaced temporary lighting solutions which were criticized following Cavalry's
2019 Canadian Championship match against the
Montreal Impact. While the stadium was not in use because of the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, ownership also upgraded water and sewage lines at the stadium.
See also
*
List of Canadian Premier League stadiums
The Canadian Premier League (CPL) is the top-division Canadian men's professional soccer league. In the 2023 season, the league will consist of eight teams in eight stadiums. The CPL primarily uses multi-purpose stadiums.
Current stadiums
Fo ...
References
External links
Official Website of Spruce MeadowsStadium Profile
{{Canadian Premier League stadiums
2018 establishments in Alberta
ATCO
Canadian Premier League stadiums
Cavalry FC
Soccer venues in Alberta
Sports venues in Calgary