The long road to better soccer fields at Ragle Ranch Regional Park

Renovating the soccer fields could cost $3.5 million. Who's going to pay for that?

Playing soccer at Ragle Ranch Park. (Photo from WESCO Facebook page)

There are eight soccer fields at Ragle Ranch Park, and all but one of them, which was reconstructed in 2022-23, is in terrible shape, marred gopher holes and mounds and ruts that make playing on them risky.

The one field that has been renovated is being used so intensively that it’s in danger of falling back into disrepair, according to Phill Carter, a board member at large with WESCO Soccer and a Sebastopol city councilmember.

“Because it’s a new field, everybody loves it,” Carter said. “It’s impacted like crazy. People use it almost all day long, every day, three or four different leagues. There’s ultimate frisbee, there’s soccer camps, there are people just kicking with their friends, and there are other soccer leagues that play on it. It’s just used to the point where it can’t ever recover.”

The WESCO Union alone has over 1,200 players who use the fields.

In 2022, WESCO United’s then President Bodhi Nadler told the Sebastopol Times: “In a word, I think the condition of the soccer fields at Ragle is ‘unsafe’. The coaches and the entire league are concerned for the safety of the players and referees who run all over those fields in the name of the beautiful game.”

Except for the renovation of Field 1, things haven’t changed.

“The eight soccer fields at Ragle—they’ve been used for the past 50 years,” Carter said. “Last year, we celebrated our 50th anniversary. Some people have been playing here their whole lives, and the fields are starting to look their age for sure. Except for one, they haven’t been updated in more than 20 years.”

Carter has been working with WESCO to raise money to renovate the other fields. It’s a heavy lift. Each field has to be dug up, compacted, underlaid with gopher wire and re-turfed. WESCO estimates that the repairs could cost about $375,000 per field. Their website suggests that fixing them all could cost $3,500,000, though Carter notes they haven’t run that estimate by an engineer.

Carter said they were able to renovate Field 1 because Sonoma County Regional Parks, which owns the fields, donated the materials and labor. WESCO raised roughly $60,000 to help pay for that renovation.

From the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation webpage on the Ragle Ranch Soccer Fields.

Sarah Campbell, marketing specialist for Sonoma County Regional Parks, said the soccer fields at Ragle Ranch Park are definitely on the agency’s radar.

“Our foundation, which is our fundraising arm, is working with the soccer club, WESCO United, and they've got an active fundraising campaign to raise funds for the renovation of Field 3 and 4,” she said.

Carter agrees that those are the next two fields on the priority list.

“We don’t use Field 4 almost at all because it’s so bad,” he said. “Fields 3 and 4 are the ones that are in the worst shape, and they’re facing Ragle Road. They’re the ones that have been used in the past for the Gravenstein Apple Festival parking sometimes, and that has degraded the fields. They’re also significantly impacted by gophers, and every year it just seems to, because of the soil type, get a little more rutted.”

Field 3, from last year, in its usual fall state. “Notice the severe undulations. This does not show the depth of the gopher ravines or height of mounds that make passing in a straight line almost impossible,” Phill Carter said. (Photo by Phill Carter)

He said that while Fields 5, 6 and 7 look greener, they’re actually almost worse because the holes and divots are hidden from view by the grass.

“A lot of the generations that have grown up on these fields are just used to it,” Carter said. “They love the fields, and they don’t mind it. They still have a good time playing soccer and the field quality doesn’t matter to them. But having come from other places—and if you play soccer anywhere else—you know the quality of the fields is subpar.”

Because of the quality of the fields at Ragle, Carter said that WESCO has to hold its main tournament, The Apple Classic, at fields in Santa Rosa.

What’s the county doing?

Carter gave a shout out to 5th District Supervisor Lynda Hopkins for her role in getting Field 1 fixed.

“Linda Hopkins was instrumental in helping us finish Field 1 for sure. Her involvement was super critical to weighing in on Sonoma County Parks’ ability to contribute to Field 1,” he said.

For Hopkins, though, the renovation of Field 1 has been frustrating.

“We renovated one field last year, but it has not been maintained well, which is very frustrating to the community members who contributed funding to the effort,” she said. “Last year, it looked great, and this year it’s largely brown and dead with gaps in grass coverage. I believe it should have been top seeded over winter as part of a holistic maintenance strategy. I have been in contact with Parks regarding the lack of maintenance after receiving complaints from members of the community,” she said.

Hopkins said the parks staff is actively working with local stakeholders to develop a plan to renovate the other fields. “The biggest challenge at Ragle is the omnipresent gopher population, which is why renovation is so expensive — gopher exclusion strategies are time and material intensive.”

Carter, a longtime environmentalist, concurred: “Because the fields have to be cared for in an organic fashion, we’re unable to really treat for anything, and that has made caring for the fields rather difficult.”

Which brings up another sticky environmental issue: artificial turf.

Carter said they’d considered using artificial turf on at least one field so they could play all year around. Grass fields are really only usable May through October, he said. The new soccer field at Brookhaven Middle School now has artificial turf, and it is being used extensively.

According to Hopkins, “A conversation about artificial turf fields is coming before the Board of Supervisors in August, and I plan to ask lots of questions about natural turf maintenance at that meeting. I’d encourage all interested community members to attend that board meeting if they care about playing fields in our regional parks, so that parks leadership and the entire board of supervisors can hear their concerns.”

Fundraising efforts

“Basically, we’re just at the beginning stages where we’re trying to hire a consulting firm to design the fields,” Carter said, noting that “We also want build sidewalks [along Ragle Road] so that Ragle is more ADA-compliant.”

“At minimum, we need to get $300,000 to begin work on Fields 3 and 4,” he said.

WESCO holds two main fundraisers a year in the form of 5K runs—one at winter solstice and one, which just happened, at summer solstice. Carter said they’d also be applying to the new West County fundraising group, the Sebastopol 100, for funding.

“In addition, a portion of everyone’s soccer fees will go to field renewal. But then we also have field repairs that we have to do every single year,” he said. “So that can't be the greatest source of our funding, right? Because this is such a loved soccer area, we really, really, really hope to get the larger community involved, and we hope to have a larger gala fundraiser at the end of the year.”

You can donate to renovation of the soccer fields at Ragle Ranch Park through the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation here.

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