MONROE — A new soccer complex about to open soon along Fryelands Boulevard to the west of town will rival the largest in Snohomish County.
Volunteers from the Sky River Soccer Club are heading to Fairfield Community Park to work on the finishing touches this weekend. A statewide soccer tournament starts the following week.
“We’ve never played on it,” Jim Johnson, the soccer club’s vice president of field development. “It’s taken us several years to get this far.”
The park on Fryelands Boulevard SE next to Fryelands Elementary School includes 40 acres, with enough space for nine regulation-size fields. In Snohomish County, it is thought to be second in size only to the Stocker Fields complex in Snohomish with more than 60 acres.
Sky River has invited 140 teams to the new fields for a statewide soccer tournament Aug. 27 through 30. Snohomish County officials have planned an opening ceremony during the tournament. League play starts Sept. 12.
County Executive Aaron Reardon announced the purchase of the land for the future park in late 2005, citing a need for more sports fields in the area. The county paid Dave and Jaque Remlinger $450,000. A state grant covered $150,000 and the rest came from the county’s parks budget.
Since then, the county has invested about $190,000, parks director Tom Teigen said. Fundraising and volunteer labor from the soccer teams made the project possible.
“It’s a great, great, great example of what we’re trying to do in county parks,” Teigen said.
Johnson said teams raised about $100,000 and donated double that amount of volunteer work.
For more information, go to www.skyriversoccer.net, or www.snocoparks.org, click on “Parks Directory: A to Z” and go to “Fairfield.”
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465, nhaglund@heraldnet.com.
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