Ground was broken for the Regal Soccer Stadium in February 2006. At its March 2005 meeting, the UT Board of Trustees approved naming a new $5.4 million Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics Soccer Stadium for Regal Cinema—the first UT athletics facility to bear a corporate name. Knoxville-based Regal Cinema contributed 40 percent of the cost of the stadium’s construction. A formal groundbreaking for the stadium was held on February 23, 2006. Architect for the project was Lockwood Greene, and the contractor was Rouse Construction.
The stadium, built on the site of the old stands, included home- and visitor-team locker rooms, a team meeting area, a players’ lounge, a video room, and concession areas on both the lower level and upper decks. A state-of-the-art Daktronics scoreboard and a new press box with separate booths for television and radio, along with phone lines and Internet access, were also included. The stadium, which opened in fall 2007, accommodated approximately three thousand fans. The grounds of the soccer complex still featured two fields that measured 80 yards by 120 yards, with less than a 1 percent crown on the competition field and television standard lights on the game field. The fields were sod with Bermuda grass and had total field irrigation. The site was previously known as the Tennessee Soccer Complex, where the women’s intercollegiate team went 63-21-1 over nine years. Opening day for the Tennessee Soccer Complex was August 30, 1996, when a standing-room-only crowd of 2,631 watched the inaugural match against Chattanooga.