By Katie Dunn |
The Pilots soccer teams won’t be the only teams playing their home matches on Merlo Field next year. The Timbers 2 (T2) professional team will begin playing their home matches on Merlo Field during the 2015 season. T2 will play in the USL PRO division, a division below MLS and will practice at the club’s Adidas Timbers Training Center in Beaverton.
The Timbers and the Pilots have had a long affiliation, including Pilots being drafted to play in the organization.
“We’ve got a long and storied history with UP dating back to Clive Charles and those great years,” Merritt Paulson, Timbers’ owner and CEO said during the Oct. 14 press conference. “UP is a big part of the Soccer City, USA story.”
Athletic Director Scott Leykam also noted the importance of the partnership with UP, the Timbers and the Thorns during the press conference.
“If we are going to be Soccer City, USA we need to live it and be a partner at every level, from youth to high school to college to the professional ranks,” Leykam said. “We feel that despite the fact that we are a nationally ranked university with a record enrollment right now, we are one of the best kept secrets in the city and we’re trying to be very intentional from an athletic standpoint about branching out to a lot of our partners.”
The Timbers look at the addition of their own USL PRO team as a huge competitive advantage and investment. They are starting a new promotion called the 1975 Trust where the first 1,975 T2 season ticket holders will have ‘ownership-like privileges’ including deciding the home/away kits the team will wear, what will be sold at concessions and be able to attend coaches meetings.
The USL PRO had 14 teams as of the 2014 season, and has announced at least seven expansions for 2015. The MLS entered into a contract with the USL PRO league in 2013 that featured team affiliations and inter-league play. One of the new teams is the Timbers rival, the Seattle Sounders, who also introduced their USL PRO team Sounders FC 2 (S2) on Oct. 14.
The 2015 schedule has not yet been released.
Katie Dunn is the sports editor and can be reached at dunn16@up.edu or on Twitter @katie_dunn24.
