Youth soccer group raising funds to buy SCSU’s Selke Field

ST. CLOUD — The Central Minnesota Youth Soccer Association is hoping to purchase a permanent home base.

The CMYSA began raising funds on April 4 to try to purchase Selke Field,

St. Cloud State University’s

historic, off-campus 16.28-acre athletic facilities site on the southeast side of St. Cloud.

Emily Willaert, CMYSA’s president, said that the idea of the association buying the property came along quickly.

“We have rented Selke Field in some capacity for the last 10 years with Central Minnesota Youth Soccer,” she said. “Last spring, we were notified that St. Cloud State was taking Selke Field offline, meaning that they were turning over property rights to the state of Minnesota. At that time, we started talking in our Board of Directors about whether or not purchasing Selke Field would make sense for us.”

The property is valued at $290,000 and will be sold for no less than that, according to a news release from the university.

“We started fundraising for it when we were notified that a bid would be allowed,” Willaert said. “The State of Minnesota did an appraisal of the property. When the appraisal came back, it kind of wowed us that this could be a space we could purchase.”

The association began a

fundraising campaign

and has raised about $50,000 with a goal of $100,000 for a down payment to be raised by May 5. CMYSA is also looking to make sure that the granite wall that surrounds Selke Field remains. The field, which opened in 1937, has a wall that was built by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.

“We kind of split this into three phases,” Willaert said of the fundraising. “If we could have a down payment provided by donations, that could put us in a spot where we could make some improvements and make an assessment of the wall. The wall is an important part of St. Cloud history and we’d like to maintain that. Being able to apply for a grant for the wall is a big part of our second phase of improvements. If our first down payment could be made in fundraising efforts, that would be huge for our club.”

Contributed / College of St. Benedict

The second phase is paying for the property.

“That would be based on the bid that Minnesota would accept if we happen to be the bidder that they accept,” Willaert said. “Phase three would be after the facility is paid for, how do we create this into a Central Minnesota mecca for soccer? Our first goal is to raise $100,000. We just hit the $50,000 mark, which is a big deal for us.

“After May 18, we will know if the state of Minnesota accepts our bid. Hopefully, we do, then we would move into phase two of our programming to raise whatever the bidding price was.”

CMYSA needs to have a final bid into the state by May 18.

The goal is to have one central spot for all the association’s teams, which serve about 1,000 players from the age kindergarten through the first year of college.

“I have been pretty astounded by our (soccer) community support,” Willaert said. “Our families are excited about the possibility of having some stability in our field rental. Every year, we kind of go at them with, ‘these teams will be practicing here at Selke and these teams will be at Whitney and these teams will be at 742.’

“Just the idea that we would have some control over field rental costs and location is pretty exciting for our families. There’s huge ties to St. Cloud State and Selke Field in general in our club. We have parents that grew up playing at Selke Field. Being able to commit that to our club legacy would be fun for those people.”

CMYSA is looking for support outside the soccer community in St. Cloud to help support their efforts.

“We’ve gotten some larger donations of $500 and $1,000,” Willaert said. “We just would really love to see everyone in the community put forward $5 so that, when we put together our proposal to state of Minnesota, it’s not just that the soccer community wants it to be green space. It’s that St. Cloud wants it to be green space.

Contributed / St. Cloud State University Archives

“The state proposal doesn’t always take the largest bidder. They take into consideration community impact and community desire. Our big goal is to try to show in numbers that St. Cloud wants this to stay green. That’s our push until our proposal date. Our

Go Fund Me

is to have as many donors as possible instead of focusing on the number.”

If CMYSA gets to purchase Selke Field, Willaert said that the facility could fit six full-sized soccer fields or 8-10 smaller fields.