St. Pius breaks ground on new sports facility to open in 2027

It was hard to figure out which was louder: the popping tubes of confetti when St. Pius school officials broke ground on a new stadium Thursday, or the cheers that followed when the previously contained black and gold flakes — the Sartans’ school colors — burst into the air.

No, it wasn’t for Curtis Flakes Jr.’s 44th birthday, but the St. Pius football coach couldn’t help but appreciate the moment anyway.

“What a birthday gift,” Flakes said with a grin. “Having our own home field? We’re super excited about that.”

The rest of St. Pius’ students, coaches, teachers, administrators and alumni are looking forward to the planned 2027 opening, too, even if the school’s future multiuse facility for football, soccer, and track and field is currently a small pile of dirt next to an excavator.

Hey, every project has to start somewhere. And for this project, that meant a groundbreaking ceremony in front of Ben Rios Field — the school’s current soccer stadium.

“There’s been so many memories and great experiences on this field, so it’s a little bittersweet in that way,” said boys soccer coach AJ Herrera, who won four state titles during his playing career at St. Pius and was the 1998-99 New Mexico Gatorade Player of the Year.

“But this is the right decision for the school and the athletic programs, and that makes this super exciting. We’ve been waiting a long time for today and this means so much to the whole community.”

The Sartans’ new stadium will feature green turf, have a seating capacity of 3,000 and offer the usual amenities of a digital scoreboard, press box and concessions. The biggest? It will have lights. The stadium field will also retain the Ben Rios name in honor of one of the school’s former students.

All in all, the stadium is projected to cost around $5 million with St. Pius seeking to raise an additional $1 million “because the more we can raise, the more bells and whistles we can have and help us build some features now instead of waiting,” said Julie Cook, St. Pius’ vice president of institutional advancement.

Construction is scheduled to begin this summer with the major infrastructure and stadium framework to be completed some time in the fall. The football and soccer portions of the stadium are expected to be completed in the spring of 2027, in plenty of time for that year’s upcoming football and soccer seasons.

And that’s when the real fun will begin.

Per the school, St. Pius last hosted an on-campus football game in 1997 before opting to rent out game-day facilities from Albuquerque Public Schools. It was a decision motivated by the Sartans outgrowing their on-campus crowd capacity.

Between renting APS facilities, staffing them and getting security, it currently costs the school close to $5,000 per home game, Flakes said. Funds that can soon be directed back into St. Pius and its athletic programs.

“When it’s all said and done, I think our stadium is gonna be great,” Flakes said. “It’s gonna be a beautiful facility sitting over on the West Side. It’s gonna make things so much easier with scheduling — we want to not just be a New Mexico brand, but a national brand — and it will be a venue for our own people to hold things.”