Soccer clubs seeking new, dedicated fields

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Monica Grant knows how team sports can bring a community together.

Her son and daughter have played recreationally and competitively since first lacing up their cleats in 2016. Grant’s husband is a coach and North Whidbey Soccer Club’s director of recreation. Grant, herself, is Central Whidbey Soccer Club’s registrar and previously worked in public relations for North Whidbey’s club.

“I don’t think that there’s really anybody that I’ve met, since I’ve lived here, that hasn’t known somebody who’s played soccer, coached soccer, been a referee or has a sibling or family member that does it,” she said.

Yet existing field space at Fort Nugent Park in Oak Harbor is in poor condition, and the Oak Harbor School District’s longstanding plan to build a new elementary school on the property is being discussed once again. Meanwhile, there are currently no concrete plans to bring more soccer fields to the area.

“Soccer is almost five times as big as any other youth sport on this island,” Grant said. “I just feel strongly that we should have those dedicated spaces.”

Three soccer clubs each serving North, Central and South Whidbey comprise the Whidbey Island Youth Soccer Association, which falls under the jurisdiction of Washington Youth Soccer. The nonprofit is affiliated with youth and adult soccer programs at the national level, as well as FIFA, the international governing body of soccer.

Fort Nugent’s six soccer fields function as the home game location for the North and Central clubs; Grant said Central Whidbey has no home fields, playing most at Fort Nugent and some at the South Whidbey Sports Complex in Langley. The Fort Nugent property is owned by the district but leased to the city of Oak Harbor.

North and Central Whidbey alone serve over 1,000 players every year, Grant said, and participation has “steadily increased over the past five years.” Both clubs offer two full seasons of recreational soccer in the fall and spring. Deception FC, North Whidbey’s competitive soccer program, is active throughout the year.

But drainage and irrigation issues at Fort Nugent frequently displace players and have for as long as Grant can remember. Soggy grass is unsafe to play on, making large portions of the fields unusable for much of the season. Games are often moved or canceled and practices regularly held elsewhere.

Wildcat Memorial Stadium at Oak Harbor High School can be rented, but clubs must work around school-affiliated teams’ schedules. Grant said the introduction of flag football to the school’s winter sports slate this school year, for example, newly affected the field’s availability. Central Whidbey, in particular, spends upwards of $2,000 to rent field space at Camp Casey, she added.

Often, finding available field space means playing late on weeknights, when many players have school early the next morning, Grant said.

Improving the Fort Nugent fields would be an ill-suited solution.

Some of the Fort Nugent fields would be eliminated in the event the school district decides to build a new elementary school on the acreage it owns. That $81 million project, and another funding major improvements to several aging facilities, were two recommendations of the district’s Capital Facilities Advisory Committee presented at a March 9 board meeting.

No decisions were made about the future of capital projects in the district, but the committee made the benefits of a new school clear. With a capacity of around 750 students, a new elementary school could virtually eliminate the need for portable classrooms and newly serve a part of the city in which the district is growing the most.

Superintendent Michelle Kuss-Cybula stressed in an interview that the district bought the property in 1988 with the intention of one day building a school there, so “it was never a permanent answer” to the question of soccer field space in Oak Harbor.

Finding a solution may require collaboration between the city and the district, and both parties have discussed the matter over the last year or two, she added.

“It’s actually not an ideal field for soccer, it needs flat space. And that’s what we’re working on with the city,” she said. “We have some areas that we have delineated as potential, that we will be working on and continuing to partner with the city for.”

Kuss-Cybula encouraged the public to see the construction of a new school as an amenity gained by the community, rather than just a loss of fields. But ultimately, she added, the school district’s first priority is its students and their education.

Grant prefers new soccer fields be built elsewhere, adding that if the school district wants to build a new school at Fort Nugent, it should. Still, Grant stressed the urgency to create more field space in other ways.

Island County’s 2025 comprehensive plan update plans for the addition of just one soccer field over the next two decades, which Grant said would not meet current demand nor support the sport’s growth.

Oak Harbor purchased a 75-acre property on Gun Club Road for $1.1 million in 2020, intending to build a park which could support six new soccer fields among other amenities, according to a previous News-Times story. Higher than anticipated costs and other challenges meant plans fell through.

The city is currently exploring the feasibility of constructing a recreation center, according to a presentation given by the city’s Communication Officer Magi Aguilar at last week’s Chamber of Commerce luncheon. Aguilar explained to the News-Times that right now, the recreation center would be an indoor facility, but the city is seeking feedback from the community on the matter.

She clarified, however, that the recreation center feasibility study is in the “soft launch phase” at the moment.

Grant emailed county officials in January about the issue, explaining that the creation of a regional soccer complex with six full-sized fields would be the ideal solution but that clubs are open to other options. She has since met with Oak Harbor Mayor Ronnie Wright as well, a conversation she said she left feeling seen and heard.

A statement from the city of Oak Harbor said Wright is working with the Parks and Rec department “to come up with concepts for soccer fields.”

“He knows it’s a big sport on the island and is working with the team to come up with a plan to support not only soccer, but all other sports as best he can,” it added.