JEROME — The long-awaited regular season debut for College of Southern Idaho soccer will not occur at the originally-planned site. Now, more than a year later, after plans were launched, CSI will host its home openers at 1 p.m.
(women) and 3:30 p.m. (men) Thursday against Colorado Northwestern Community College at Jerome High School.
Not across town at the unfinished site of a 17-acre park in Jerome’s south side, which includes the home of future College of Southern Idaho teams. No physical address appears at the site. Not yet, at least.
You only know if you know. No scoreboard, no bleachers, just some fence, a large parking lot, a few fields and a smattering of construction equipment across the site. Construction crews work on the new CSI soccer field on Tuesday east of Jerome Valley Wide Country Store off of East Nez Perce Avenue in Jerome.
The new field will be used for home games and is estimated to be ready for the next fall season. No signage indicating the home of College of Southern Idaho soccer. All the signs of a work in progress.
City administrators and CSI faculty expected a fall 2024 completion date when plans were officially announced in May 2023. CSI announced plans to add men’s and women’s soccer programs as well as its intent to play all home games at a new outdoor recreation facility being developed in Jerome. CSI’s men's soccer team against the College of Idaho’s on Aug.
31 at Jerome High School. “We knew everything would have to go absolutely perfect and there could be no unforeseen problems or issues in order to meet that timeline,” Jerome City Administrator Mike Williams told the Times-News . Williams said he expects a fall 2025 opening for the park with the 2025 CSI home opener as the official first event.
“It is unfortunate that it is not ready,” CSI Athletic Director Daequon Montreal told the Times-News . “Obviously with the inaugural kickoff to our first season, we would have loved for it to be on our home field and do that. Again, we are still excited about the opportunity to get to play.
” Associate athletic director Daequon Montreal became the school’s athletic director, CSI announced Wednesday via press release. The city of Jerome received a gift. Williams said discussions between the city and the idea of a new recreational soccer park began in 2020 but the plans lacked a large funding source.
That all changed when the city received about $2.8 million from the American Rescue Plan, which was meant to help communities recover economically following the COVID-19 pandemic. Jerome Urban Renewal Agency also joined the project and designated the funds to a proposed 17-acre park facility.
That’s when CSI joined talks. Not just a soccer field. Parking lots, playground, picnic shelters and restrooms.
A plaza area which could include space for food trucks during Golden Eagles’ matches. It is a project for the Jerome Recreation District designated with multi-purpose soccer fields for youth and adult soccer leagues. Williams said the fields could also be used for flag football, youth football and lacrosse.
The group is also seeking funding to potentially build pickleball courts. One field will be 100% designated for recreational use while the other is solely designated for collegiate soccer during the fall. Williams said the college will pay for the field's fencing, dugouts, stands, scoreboards and required field maintenance.
“It is going to be beautiful when it is done,” former CSI athletic director Joel Bate told the Times-News . Bate retired June 30 but led the school's efforts to bring collegiate soccer to southern Idaho. College of Southern Idaho athletic director Joel Bate will retire as his contract expires June 30, leaving a legacy of mentorship, service and loyalty.
The Jerome Recreation District uses Gayle Forsyth Park for the majority of its youth soccer matches but overcrowding led to using outfields of the baseball and softball fields. “Just the old park there wasn’t a lot of consideration put in for parking,” Williams said. “This facility, we have put a lot of thought into that and have very nice parking facilities to serve the park.
” Jerome broke ground on the facility in summer 2023 but immediately encountered obstacles. Irrigation was needed to plant the soccer fields’ grass but old abandoned underground concrete irrigation pipes, which Williams said the group knew were somewhere in the area, were discovered. “We were hoping they were buried far enough to where we wouldn’t have to deal with it but when we started excavation, we hit it and discovered that they would have to be piped with new pipes and buried deeper,” Williams said.
“So, that wasn’t something we could just deal within a day or two.” The underground pipe happened to be “right in the middle” of the planned soccer field, which delayed plans to plant grass until spring 2024, instead of late summer and early fall 2023. “That was the hope,” Williams said.
“We knew everything would have to go absolutely perfect and there could be no unforeseen problems or issues in order to meet that timeline. Because really, you need that grass to get in and grow and have at least a year before you want to put collegiate athletes on that thing because they will rip it apart pretty quick.” A look at the renderings of the 17-acre park in Jerome, which will include the home field for College of Southern Idaho soccer.
Some changes have been made so this is not an exact rendition. The two fields are planted and constantly growing. Excavation to the site started almost immediately.
Williams said the city engineer and contracted engineers potholed the area trying to find the underground pipes. “It was just not in a straight line,” Williams said. “They spent some time trying to find it.
They could not find it so the thought was well, it might be deep enough we don’t have to worry about it but we know it is there somewhere. Sure enough, when we started excavation, they found it. Discovered it.
" "With that being said, we were very upfront with CSI from the beginning," he said. "We both knew that there needed to be a Plan B for the start of their season which is this year. Everyone hoped that the soccer fields would be ready but we knew there had to be a Plan B.
” The College of Southern Idaho's first soccer coach, Alex Ferreira, plans to prioritize Idaho players in recruiting. Backup options were available, problem was, CSI head soccer coach Alex Ferreira needed a playing surface up to college standards which he said includes a surface flat enough where the ball won’t bump or bobble. Not just mostly flat.
But as flat as possible. The school's planned field is at a 1% slope, Williams said. Ferreira said a college-level field also needs shorter grass length which allows the ball to travel faster.
But short blades require more watering and more fertilization. The team assessed options at Sunway Soccer Complex, Canyon Ridge High School and Jerome High School. The Tigers surpassed their 2023 win total with a 6-1 start to this season.
But Ferreira and the college landed on Jerome High School for reasons beyond a sufficient playing surface and something the other sites couldn’t boast like bleachers, a scoreboard, dugouts and small locker room spaces. “It was pretty much the most obvious choice,” Ferreira said. “We could have been in Twin for a year but that is kinda not the purpose or the idea of the soccer program.
To keep it in Jerome, to have our presence be in Jerome, from the beginning was what we wanted always.” Ferreira likened the facility to the same level of many Scenic West Athletic Conference opponents. “I think the first thing is that since it is a public park, it is a public process,” he said.
“Anything that needs to be done over a certain price has to be bidded out by three bidders and because it is a public project, that extended time of the bidding process and making everything as transparent as possible certainly adds to the timeline.” History shows this temporary home situation isn’t new for CSI athletics. The college's first men’s basketball team (1966-67) never boasted a permanent home.
The squad, with future Basketball Hall of Famer Eddie Sutton as head coach, played wherever they could find an open court. Twin Falls High School. Filer High School.
Murtaugh High School. Heck, the school's didn’t even break ground for the campus’ first building until August 1967. CSI's gymnasium arrived three years later.
The College of Southern Idaho, on Monday, nearly 56 years after its first men’s basketball team defeated the AAU team full of the Texas Western players depicted in Glory Road, will honor the school’s connection in a film showing. Twin Falls High School also served as the home for the college's classes yet the team still thrived on a national level. CSI softball played its inaugural 2007 season at Twin Falls High School before CSI’s field, constructed on a former corn field, completed construction before the 2008 season.
CSI softball qualified for their third straight NJCAA Division I Softball World Series, which will take place May 20-25 at Choccolocco Park in Oxford, Alabama. “I mean, we are a small junior college but we don’t operate that way,” Montreal said. “When we were tasked with this opportunity to start soccer, yeah, our vision is big and it still is.
It is just a matter of meeting that in the demand of the world that we live in today where I’m sure the foreman on that project out there has been pulled in many different ways.” The college, from the beginning of its soccer announcement in May 2023, planned to build a practice field south of the dorms. Scott Youree, with Windsor's Nursery, adjusts sprinkler heads on July 24 on the CSI campus in Twin Falls.
The grounds are used as a practice field for the CSI soccer teams. That never changed, the college built it and that is where the squads have practiced from the start of August. CSI soccer’s first home event — a women’s scrimmage against the College of Idaho — occurred Aug.
13 on that practice field. Alex Ferreira, 368 days after College of Southern Idaho introduced him as its inaugural soccer coach, led his squad to its first competitive event. “It is really cool,” freshman Alyssa Harris told the Times-News after the scrimmage.
“It is fun to get to start the program and there is a lot of freshmen so it is like a new start to all of us. We are all in the same boat together so it is really fun that we all can share this experience together.” CSI soccer’s offices are located in the college's gymnasium and the players live in the dorms so Montreal said traveling to Jerome daily for practice “doesn’t make sense.
” Montreal said the college and JHS will split some of the field maintenance costs for CSI matches. This is because plenty of upkeep will be required between four teams sharing this field for competition. It goes beyond mowing, too.
Watering. Fertilization. Paint.
Ferreira added the schools are “collaborating on a lot of the equipment expenses” such as specialized mowers, rollers and a GPS field liner. “They have all been awesome because it wasn’t like, ‘Hey, this is your rate to use our facility.’ Or, ‘Hey, we even have games on this day but we would be willing to help you guys out and move some games here and we all can play on the same day,’” Montreal said.
“It is not like, ‘Hey, we have a game. It is a no-go on this day.’ They have been more than willing to help because obviously they see the benefit of having CSI on their campus.
” It’s further proof of the partnership between Jerome and the college, which extends beyond athletics. Jerome boasts one of CSI’s three off-campus centers, which includes classes, community education classes, GED prep and English Language Acquisition classes, according to the school’s website. Some schedule tweaks were required to fit the high school and college schedules but some days, such as Oct.
5, will include JHS girls soccer and a conference match for CSI soccer against Truckee Meadows Community College on the same day. Montreal added that the SWAC schedules are required to remain the same unless a change is needed, which would require CSI to “go through the proper channels to submit game changes.” For the college, that looks like 14 SWAC matches — seven home and seven away.
The teams will play doubleheaders and travel together as Ferreira and assistant coach Andrew Zaleski coach the men and women. “We are really excited to have collegiate soccer played here in Jerome,” Williams said. “Hoping that everybody remains patient.
If you drive by, you will see progress every day. It is going to be a facility that will serve the community for years to come.” Your story lives in the Magic Valley, and our new mobile app is designed to make sure you don’t miss breaking news, the latest scores, the weather forecast and more.
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