The Leagues use soccer fields under user permits with the City of Albuquerque and are members of the Southwest Youth Soccer Corporation, which operates the State Farm Soccer Tournament Complex on Santa Ana tribal property near Bernalillo.
Soccer Fields in the City of Albuquerque
The City of Albuquerque has a joint operating agreement with Albuquerque Public Schools to enable the City to schedule use of certain APS fields, generally elementary and middle school fields. It does not cover fields at high school fields. If you wish to use a high school field for practice, you have to arrange that directly with the school. Outside of the fields at St. Pius High School, which are operated by the City, no private school fields such as Albuquerque Academy or Sandia Prep are part of the agreement between the City and APS.
It is against the law to bring alcohol to any city or school field. Two exceptions are Bullhead Park and Los Altos Park, both of which have softball facilities. It is also against the law to bring glass containers.
For game play, we use fields at Arroyo del Oso complex and St. Pius High School. Directions to the fields and the field layouts are found under the tab under Soccer Field Info.
As part of our agreement with the City, we place portable toilets at Arroyo Del Oso and St. Pius. They are placed there for a good reason. We would prefer you actually use them for their intended purpose, as opposed to a more natural approach. We have the Arroyo Del Oso and St. Pius units serviced once a week (on Friday). One can never tell what additional people may be around using said units, so we would suggest throwing a roll of toilet paper in your bag just in case.
We actually pay for people to pick up your trash at the city fields. This is fairly embarrasing that adult soccer players can’t do this themselves, but tends to be a good fundraiser for local youth soccer clubs. Next time you complain about how much it costs to play, soccer, this is an expense that could easily be eliminated with the slightest effort on the part of the participants.
The State Farm New Mexico Soccer Tournament complex is the location for the bulk of our fields. Directions and the field layouts can be found under the tab under Soccer Field Info. The State Farm NMSTC is effectively owned by five soccer organizations: NM Youth Soccer, NM State Soccer (the adult leagues), Duke City Soccer League, Northwest Rio Grande Soccer League, and the NM High School Coaches Association. The annual operating budget is about $400 thousand dollars. We pay for that based on rental agreements among the owners, gate charges, and rent for special events. We have no sugar daddy to fall back on. We also have no interest by the City in building a 22 field complex in the middle of the City of Albuquerque, so this is the best we’ve got and we don’t have to worry about being kicked off for anyone else.
Alcohol and pets are prohibited at the NMSTC. Please leave your dogs and beer at home.
For the time being, we’re still dependent on portable toilets and you need to bring your own water. Depending on county politics and the generosity of the New Mexico Legislature, we may get lucky and get some upgrades over the next two years.
Please note this change: every week, the field manager at the NMSTC will survey the team areas after each game and report back on what teams left trash. We’ll send your team a nice little $25 bill for that, as we get to pay extra for trash pickup at the complex. As we can determine exactly who left the trash, we’ll use a direct funding approach at that location.
