Four World Cup Teams Trained on a UW Field This Summer. Nobody Was Allowed In.

Seattle Fitness Magazine · 19 Sep 2026

• 4world cup teams
• $3.8Mrenovation cost
• 3weeks closed to public

Four teams came through, and nobody watched

A soccer field on the shore of Lake Washington hosted four World Cup teams this summer.

Team USA, Egypt, Iran and Belgium each trained at Husky Soccer Stadium, the practice pitch just east of Husky Stadium, before heading downtown to compete in the tournament. None of it was open to the public.

For three weeks in June and July, a closed pitch sat on a public university campus that anyone can otherwise walk across. Three months later the same grass is where UW women's soccer plays its home fixtures.

The work started with drainage, not turf

UW began renovating the practice field in the summer of 2025, a year ahead of the tournament.

It was one of the first visible signs, on the ground in Seattle, that the World Cup was coming: crews moving onto what UW Magazine called a well-worn soccer field, and tearing it up. The project cost $3.8 million. Its stated purpose was to let UW serve as what the university called a venue-specific training site for visiting international teams, which is a narrow job: be good enough that a national squad will train on you between matches.

Dan Erickson, UW's associate athletic director, was the project manager on it. Drainage is not a detail spectators notice. It matters when a team expects a surface that plays the same in week three as it does on day one. "There was a full reconstruction of the playing surface and sub-grade drainage and a new sprinkler system," Erickson said. Three things, none of them visible once the grass grows back over them.

Netting for a field that sits on a lake

Husky Soccer Stadium runs right up against Lake Washington, close enough that a mishit shot does not stop at the touchline, it keeps going into the water. The field sits just east of Husky Stadium, on the same stretch of shoreline. The renovation added netting along that side of the field, there specifically to keep stray shots from ending up in the lake.

It is a small fix for a specific problem, and the kind that rarely appears in a press release. Crews also built a new covered bench area. That is ordinary in most cities and less ordinary in one where the outdoor season runs through the wet months. Neither detail makes a highlight reel. Neither is the sort of thing a budget line advertises.

The pole that waited on a bird

All four of the field's light poles were retrofitted with LED fixtures as part of the renovation.

Three went up on schedule. The fourth did not, because an osprey had nested on top of it. "It had an osprey nest, so we had to wait until they cleared out," Erickson said. FIFA does not build a bird's schedule into a training-site timeline.

Seattle does. The pole waited until the nest was empty and the work could finish. UW Magazine called it a uniquely Seattle complication, which is generous: a lighting upgrade timed to FIFA's arrival, held up by a bird that had got there first.

Ten to twelve practices, closed to everyone

Before the tournament, UW expected the facility to host 10 to 12 practice dates across the six matches scheduled in Seattle from June 15 to July 6, with some teams sharing it on the same day. In June, before any of the four teams had set foot on it, Erickson talked about what was coming. "It's really cool that we're going to have some of the best players in the world on our field," he said then. "Just to play a small role in the World Cup being here in Seattle, with Seattle being such a soccer city, it's great to have this legacy gift."

Team USA, Egypt, Iran and Belgium each trained there and then travelled downtown to play at Lumen Field, though not under that name that summer. FIFA strips sponsor branding from World Cup venues, so for the length of the tournament the building ran as Seattle Stadium, a name that existed for a few weeks and then went away as soon as the tournament did. The USMNT's final visit to Seattle included a stop from Dubs, UW's live husky mascot, and a custom jersey gifted to head coach Mauricio Pochettino.

Back to being a college field

Husky Soccer Stadium shows up twelve times on UW women's soccer's home schedule this year, which is where the season lives now that the World Cup has moved on. The surface Belgium trained on in June, the one that took $3.8 million, a full reconstruction of the drainage, netting against the lake and one delayed light pole to get ready, now hosts college fixtures.

Twelve of them are on the schedule. A field rebuilt to a standard four national teams would accept is now a college ground again, used by the people it was shut to in June. The World Cup asked Seattle for a professional-grade pitch on a lake, took it for three weeks without letting anybody in, and then left it behind.

Photo: Husky Athletics Communications.