Barbara Hibner Soccer Stadium (commonly referred to as Hibner Stadium) is a

college soccer College soccer is played by teams composed of soccer players who are enrolled in colleges and universities. It is very prominent in United States, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and as well as in South Africa and the Philippines. The United Kingd ...

stadium on the campus of the

University of Nebraska–Lincoln The University of Nebraska–Lincoln (Nebraska, NU, or UNL) is a public land-grant research university in Lincoln, Nebraska. Chartered in 1869 by the Nebraska Legislature as part of the Morrill Act of 1862, the school was known as the Universit ...

Lincoln, Nebraska Lincoln is the capital city of the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Lancaster County. The city covers with a population of 292,657 in 2021. It is the second-most populous city in Nebraska and the 73rd-largest in the United Sta ...

. The 2,500-seat stadium opened in 2015 and serves as the primary home venue for Nebraska's soccer program. The complex is named for Barbara Hibner, who served as an athletic administrator at the university from 1976 to 2005.

History

Nebraska's soccer program was established in 1994, making NU the first school in the

Big Eight Conference The Big Eight Conference was a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)-affiliated Division I-A college athletic association that sponsored football. It was formed in January 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Associatio ...

to sponsor a women's soccer varsity program. From its creation until 2014, the program played its home games at the Ed Weir Track & Soccer Stadium; before it was demolished in 2019, the stadium was located along the northeast corner of Memorial Stadium and named in honor of

College Football Hall of Fame The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were vote ...

Ed Weir Samuel Edwin Weir (March 14, 1903 – May 15, 1991) was an American collegiate and professional football player. He was the first Nebraska Cornhuskers football player elected to the College Football Hall of Fame and is known as one of Nebraska ...

. The soccer field at the Weir complex, built in 1975, was among the smallest in the Big Ten and the only one without stadium lights. In July 2013, the University of Nebraska Board of Regents approved the construction of a privately funded $20.4-million soccer and tennis complex to be located north of the

Bob Devaney Sports Center The Bob Devaney Sports Center (commonly referred to as the Devaney Center, formerly the NU Sports Complex) is a sports complex on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Lincoln, Nebraska. The 7,909-seat arena opened in 1976 and serves ...

, adjacent to Nebraska Innovation Campus. The tennis development was named for donors Sid and Hazel Dillon; the soccer development was named in honor of Dr. Barbara Hibner, who served as an administrator overseeing women's athletic programs at Nebraska for nearly thirty years. Hibner, who spearheaded the creation of

mascot A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fi ...

Lil' Red Lil' Red is the lesser of two mascots representing University of Nebraska–Lincoln's athletic programs. Lil' Red was created in 1993, after a statewide contest was conducted to find a counterpart for Herbie Husker. Then-associate athletic directo ...

in 1994, received the University of Nebraska athletic department's first Trailblazer Award, an award that was renamed in her honor following her death in 2007. Hibner Stadium broke ground in 2014 and was dedicated on September 25, 2015. The 2,500-seat venue features a sitting- or standing-room berm on the east end of the field. John Walker, the program's head coach since its inception, said of the new stadium: "This is phenomenal. Everything is first class. There's nothing cookie-cutter about it." Nebraska ranked thirteenth nationally in attendance in its first season at Hibner Stadium.

References

{{Coord, 40.8378, -96.7000, type:landmark, display=title College soccer venues in the United States Soccer venues in Nebraska Sports in Lincoln, Nebraska Sports venues in Nebraska Buildings and structures in Lincoln, Nebraska