By Morgan Nunley
Online Editor

Over the summer, the United Soccer League (USL) announced that they had begun a partnership with USL Arkansas and planned to build a stadium for professional men’s and women’s soccer teams in Rogers.

The stadium is being built just north of the Pinnacle Hills Promenade in Rogers, on Bellview Road, with other roads surrounding the stadium being Lazy and South 41st Street.

This would be the first major professional league dipping their toe in the Northwest Arkansas area, and will give sports fans around the area something additional to root for other than the Hogs.

The project is led by Chris Martinovic and Warren Smith, the two co-founders of the USL Arkansas teams. Martinovic is a business executive in NWA and has been a fan and passionate about soccer for his entire life.

Martinovic used to play the sport in college at Seton Hall and, according to a news release, had a “lifelong passion” for the sport. Smith, on the other hand, had an established record of building soccer teams and stadiums around the country, with the hope being that the mix between these two minds will steer the new professional team in the right direction.

The start of a professional team in the area is a massive stepping point for the rapidly growing Northwest Arkansas area. The surface-level hope is that the program will continue to spread the popularity of soccer.

Soccer is a world-renowned sport that is known for bringing large groups of people together for the sake of rooting for the same team that is more often than not from your country or city at the very least.

It isn’t as popular or prevalent in the United States or in the Arkansas area, as the area has American football, basketball, and baseball as the main three sports that take precedence over anything else.

This team could continue to bring more soccer fans to the area and grow the sport’s popularity as well as enticing more players and participation.

The other major piece of this puzzle is that this could bring other sports leagues and teams to the area and continue to grow the area in that way.

The goal, no pun intended, should be to continue to use these attractions of sports and recreation to grow the area and increase the public interaction and publicity in the area.

This is a small step in what could be a bright future for Northwest Arkansas. The area is already populated and continuing to exponentially increase, and with the new events like Walmart’s major home office development, the new soccer team and stadium, and the continued growth of areas like Bentonville, Fayetteville, Rogers, and Springdale, it is only a matter of time before this is the area to be in the Natural State, if it isn’t already.

Morgan Nunley is a journalism student at NWACC and online editor for the NWACC Eagle View.