Mike A. Myers Stadium is the home of

The University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

Longhorn

track and field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping events ...

and

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 ...

teams and also home to the

USATF USA Track & Field (USATF) is the United States national governing body for the sports of track and field, cross country running, road running and racewalking (known as the sport of athletics outside the US). The USATF was known between 1979 and ...

Elite Running Circuit Austin Track Club. The 20,000-seat stadium hosts the historic

Texas Relays The Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays are an annual track and field competition held at Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin, Texas. The University of Texas serves as host for the event, held on either the first or second weekend of April. Events are he ...

annually in April, as well as the

University Interscholastic League The University Interscholastic League (UIL) is an organization that creates rules for and administers almost all athletic, musical, and academic contests for public primary and secondary schools in the U.S. state of Texas. It is the largest organi ...

track and field state championship in May.

Opening

In 1996, plans were made to construct the stadium in response to the need to expand

Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium Darrell K Royal Memorial Stadium (formerly War Memorial Stadium, Memorial Stadium, and Texas Memorial Stadium), located in Austin, Texas, on the campus of the University of Texas, has been home to the Longhorns football team since 1924. The sta ...

and convert it to a football-specific facility, the desire to move track and field events to a venue that was more fan and athlete friendly, and the need to construct an appropriate on-campus facility to house the varsity soccer program begun in 1994. Construction began in 1997, and the stadium was opened in March 1999, just in time to host the Texas Relays. The stadium is named for Mike Myers, a residential community developer who lives in

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

, who is also a graduate of UT's

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

and

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s, in recognition of his $3 million donation to finance construction. The opening of the stadium now meant that track and field events could take place in the same venue; previously, field events had been conducted at nearby

Clark Field Clark is an English language surname, ultimately derived from the Latin with historical links to England, Scotland, and Ireland ''clericus'' meaning "scribe", "secretary" or a scholar within a religious order, referring to someone who was educate ...

out of concern for the condition of the football stadium's turf.

Events hosted

The stadium hosted the 2002 NCAA Women's Soccer Championship, the 2004 NCAA Men's and

Women's A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...

Outdoor Track and Field Championships, and the 2003

Big 12 Conference The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its ...

Outdoor Championship. In April 2018, the NCAA awarded the 2019 and 2020 NCAA Men's & Women's Outdoor Track & Field Championships to the University of Texas at Austin.https://www.ncaa.com/news/trackfield-outdoor-men/article/2018-04-19/ncaa-awards-2019-22-di-outdoor-track-and-field?cid=NCAATrackField_tw_sf187339841&sf187339841=1 MyersStadiumMAIN

Layout

The stadium track is a nine lane European oval, with straightaways of 82 meters and curves of 118 meters in length, which creates a longer, smoother curve than the typical 100 m-by-100 m configuration. This smoother curve has given the track a reputation as one of the fastest tracks in the United States, if not the world. The field events area consists of several throwing circles, dual jump lanes, and two

high jump The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat f ...

aprons. The facility also houses a field house consisting of a

press box The press box is a special section of a sports stadium or arena that is set up for the media to report about a given event. It is typically located in the section of the stadium holding the luxury box and can be either enclosed or open to the e ...

locker room A locker is a small, usually narrow storage compartment. They are commonly found in dedicated cabinets, very often in large numbers, in various public places such as locker rooms, workplaces, elementary schools, middle and high schools, trans ...

s for the UT track and soccer teams, visitors' and officials locker rooms, a specialized training room, and a lounge for track and soccer athletes and coaches. There is a

scoreboard A scoreboard is a large board for publicly displaying the score in a game. Most levels of sport from high school and above use at least one scoreboard for keeping score, measuring time, and displaying statistics. Scoreboards in the past used ...

at each end of the stadium, and full lighting allows events to be conducted at night. On the west side of the stadium stands a 1,200-space

parking garage A multistorey car park (British and Singapore English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistory, parking building, parking structure, parkade (mainly Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck or indoor parking, is a build ...

College GameDay

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

's '' College Gameday'' was on hand at Myers Stadium on October 22, 2005 to preview and discuss the football game versus the

Texas Tech Red Raiders The Texas Tech Red Raiders and Lady Raiders are the athletic teams that represent Texas Tech University, located in Lubbock, Texas. The women's basketball team uses the name Lady Raiders, while the school's other women's teams use the "Red Raide ...

and again on September 9, 2006 against the

Ohio State Buckeyes The Ohio State Buckeyes are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Ohio State University, located in Columbus, Ohio. The athletic programs are named after the colloquial term for people from the state of Ohio and after the state tree ...

. The ''Gameday'' set was situated to take advantage of the dramatic views of

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Austin and the UT Tower from the stadium.

Attendance records

References

* * * * * * * * * {{Big 12 Conference Soccer Venues Sports venues completed in 1999 Texas Longhorns track and field Athletics (track and field) venues in Texas College track and field venues in the United States Texas Longhorns sports venues Sports venues in Austin, Texas Soccer venues in Texas College soccer venues in the United States University of Texas at Austin campus 1999 establishments in Texas Texas Longhorns soccer