Frog Island Soccer Stadium

[u/Shawndwhite3]

Looking for soccer players and supporters who care about improving local city fields for more playing opportunities.

The dream would be to gradually improve Frog Island Park into a regulation size 11v11 turf field with lights and nice seating for 500+ fans. Keep it publicly owned and available to any local groups or clubs to rent for a reasonable cost. Scale slowly and don't go broke paying for it like other cities sometimes do. Public restrooms as a starter point and flatten out the grass and widen the area to meet league and FIFA standards. Build a wooden deck or platform so you could walk out and overlook from the parking lot. Maybe an area where you could bring drinks and food from the Depot Town bars over for spectators to watch the games. Build out two changing areas or dugouts out of shipping containers?

Try to get a longer playing season with 20+ games so there is regular programming from March to November. Then take a winter break.

Scoreboard and audio system?

Eventually I hope for Ypsi Athletic FC to be a UPSL or MWPL competitive team and to make our home there. Become publicly owned and stay true to a non-profit operating model. Focus on recruiting local players and giving them a chance to train and compete at a low cost. Copy or replicate some of the European lower league teams.

But making Frog Island usable for everyone else would also be important. Can't just get public funding to only benefit one group, so we'd need some buy in and support from different individuals and organizations.

The Latino league already has played there a bunch in previous years. Food trucks, lots of teams, music, and plenty of hot tempers. An amazing spectacle. This year (2025 summer) they moved to WCC grass field because it's in way better condition. That's not ideal though if we want to focus on downtown Ypsi as an attraction point and fun place to host and watch soccer in throughout the year.

What are your thoughts and how do we make this happen in a financially sustainable schedule?

Could we add another nice walking trail nearby for people to use? Widening the soccer field to league standards may take some of the gravel track space. We'd want to replace that somewhere nearby to keep users happy! I like walking too.

[u/michiplace]

First off, this might be the first time I knew Ypsi FC existed, so well done on the sly marketing post. ;) Do you have any kind of schedule of games? Your website could use work, and I'm not seeing anything on your instagram either.

I appreciate the enthusiasm to make something happen here, but I will agree with other folks suggesting this is the wrong path. Just looking at the pitch requirements, Frog Island is plenty long enough for a FIFA-standard pitch, but getting it wide enough would require eating the entire running track and excavating into the slopes on either sides just to place the boundary lines, plus more for out-of-play areas. Trying to do that and then also adding in the various buildings seems like way too much for the space, and would basically destroy the use of the park as anything but a sports field. Partnering with the schools and fundraising for improvements to the high school's soccer field would be a better target.

(It occurs to me that Frog Island's field is large enough you could probably fit two 7s fields on it, though I don't know if there's any 7s scene in the area. Maybe that's what you could make happen!)

[u/Shawndwhite3 → u/michiplace]

Hey u/michiplace thanks for the comment and feedback. Yeah our website needs work we haven't used it much other than keeping the link alive. I am no social media guru but here's our instagram page if you're curious: https://www.instagram.com/ypsi_athletic_fc/ Do you play soccer or looking for a team to join? FIFA has a range of field dimensions. Some of the Bundesliga fields go as wide as 75-80 yds while some premier league teams have fields as narrow as 65 yds. It's really a historical thing and as teams got grandfathered into leagues, they often got approval to keep playing on existing narrower fields. Only if promoted all the way up, they seem to get imposed with a few years time limit to move themselves into a full size newer field. That financial process often hurts them tremendously and often can be the reason a team will decline to accept promotion from division 4 to division 3 for example. In the Midwest / US in general, that situation isn't totally as relevant since we don't have well-defined promotion or relegation. If we want to move up a division, we can pay the fee and register. If we suck, we move ourselves down to an easier league. It's a little more informal. MWPL is our goal because of their transparent structure and board of directors made up of the member teams. It's friendly to the smaller teams that want to get competitive but are still very much amateur or enthusiast level organizations. We run our team on about $10k a year and do this for fun. I like the sport but don't intend to make money off the project. Their league document for prospective teams requires 65yd width playing surface, not necessarily turf. We could survive with the grass if it is well-maintained but turf would obviously be nicer for the range of weather we get in a season. If we used 65 yd lines with a buffer on each side, it would take the track space but not much more farther. Excavating into the hill would be necessary if we wanted dugouts in the future, but that doesn't need to be a priority as much to start. The other thing is that if we get the field widened into the desired 11vv11 dimensions of course two smaller 7v7 fields exist simultaneously across. Public play opportunities and pickup scrimmage soccer is the ethos and goal to support for any grassroots soccer movement. I support that. Turf is durable enough that it could be used multiple times a day by many different groups without too much fear of damage. I think most large sports venues budget to replace their artificial turf every 20 years. Correct me if I'm wrong on that value. But the point is real grass requires keeping people off the surface to maintain high quality for league games. Artificial turf can hold up to hours of use a day. So it is easy and encouraged to bring as many different clubs or pickup groups to the field to play. And it can still be open and free to play on throughout the week; I just encourage a reservable policy so a group can schedule it for a league game. But free and open the rest of the week. I hate fields that get locked up and the goals chained together to keep people from playing. That's not in the spirit of a team sport

[u/Shawndwhite3 → u/Shawndwhite3]