Ready for Boise women’s pro soccer? Fans now will have to wait another year
Idaho women’s soccer fans will need to wait a little longer for a team to call their own.
The planned Athletic Club Boise women’s club won’t take the field until the spring of 2028 thanks to league schedule changes, the club announced Thursday.
The USL Super League spent the past two years starting games in the fall and finishing in the spring. But the upstart circuit announced last month that it will move to a spring-to-fall calendar in 2027, throwing off Boise’s planned timeline.
The Idaho team intended to play its first games in the fall of 2027. Now, instead of rushing to meet a spring 2027 deadline — six months earlier than expected — the club will wait until the spring of 2028.
“From the end of our (men’s team) season, which could be November 15, it gave us 60 days to have a tier-one facility for women, and that’s never going to happen,” AC Boise CEO Brad Stith said. “The construction timeline completely crushed it.”
Stith said AC Boise remains 100% committed to bringing a women’s soccer team to Expo Idaho. But the club needs to build another locker room and add a grass practice field to host two teams at the same time.
Neither will be ready until June 2027, Stith said, noting that grass won’t grow during Idaho winters. And that doesn’t account for the time needed to hire staff, sign players, and sell tickets and sponsorships.
“You have to launch it the right way,” Stith said. “We have a standard for our clubs. You never want to minimize that standard because you’re sacrificing something.
“Rushing is a good way to make really wrong decisions.”
Boise quickly became a professional soccer success story this season. Its first-year men’s team has already broken the USL League One regular-season attendance record multiple times. And the club leads the league with an average of 7,217 fans per match entering the week, 4,323 fans above the league average.
Boise Pro Soccer’s original plans always featured a women’s team, and it was one of three expansion clubs slated to join the USL Super League in the fall of 2027. Plans for those other two teams, the New York Cosmos and Arkansas’ Ozark United, are not yet public.
The Super League’s only planned or current team west of Texas, the Spokane Zephyr, folded in May.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR WOMEN’S SOCCER IN BOISE?
AC Boise will follow a similar buildup that it did for its men’s team, hosting a series of public events open to gather feedback. The first is scheduled for 5 to 6:30 p.m. Aug. 6 at the Turf Club inside the stadium at Expo Idaho.
The club also plans to build a training facility for both the men’s and women’s team to use. And it is exploring hosting college soccer matches as well as camps and clinics at Expo Idaho.
“We owe it to every girl growing up in Idaho to build something worthy of her ambition,” AC Boise co-owner Sofia Huerta said in a news release. “Women’s soccer deserves more than a team — it deserves a club that’s sustainable, professionally run and built to the highest standard.
“We’re going to keep listening, keep investing and build something this community can believe in for generations.”
USL SUPER LEAGUE SCHEDULE CHANGE
The Super League originally marketed its fall-to-spring schedule as a competitive advantage, noting it aligns with schedules in other countries. That makes it easier to sign international transfers and compete in international tournaments.
The league has since changed its tune. The new schedule aligns with the National Women’s Soccer League, smoothing the process for player loans. It also allows college prospects to join a USL club at the beginning of its season instead of midway through.
USL Super League President Amanda Vandervort told ESPN last month the schedule change allows the USL to become more collaborative with other leagues ahead of the 2031 World Cup.
“I think it’s the marketplace that’s shifted and we want to be part of that,” Vandervort told ESPN. “We want to be a leader within that space. Our strategy has always been to be a leader in global soccer. But for us, with the World Cup coming to the United States, and with the changes in the ecosystem domestically, that means being on this calendar.”
A pair of former Treasure Valley athletes played in the USL Super League last season. Boise High grad Bre Norris (2021) was a goalkeeper for Brooklyn FC and has re-signed with the club for its abbreviated fall 2026 season. And Rocky Mountain High grad Kelsey Oyler (2021) played in 27 of 28 games as a Spokane defender before the club folded.
