How Georgia turned Sanford Stadium into a soccer pitchplayMatt Stinchcomb ranks his top offensive lines in the SEC (3:27)J.J. PostAug 20, 2026, 09:00 AM ETMultiple Authors
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On Thursday night, thousands of fans will flock to Sanford Stadium to watch Georgia play football.
Just not American football.
The venerable 93,033-seat venue will instead host Georgia’s women’s soccer squad as it takes on James Madison in nonconference play. And records are in reach: The NCAA’s attendance records of 14,410 for women’s soccer and 22,512 for men’s soccer have stood for 27 and 46 years, respectively. Both could be toppled in Athens on Thursday.
But before there was a shot at a record, there was a uniquely perfect timing.
Coach Keidane McAlpine, athletic director Josh Brooks and deputy athletic director Stephanie Ransom had mused about Bulldogs soccer in Sanford, and realized the 2026 campaign was a prime opportunity.
The men’s World Cup had just been held in the United States, Mexico and Canada, with games being played at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, known as Atlanta Stadium. The women’s World Cup is already on the horizon for next summer. U.S. Soccer opened its new Georgia-based headquarters in May, while an NWSL expansion franchise was awarded to Atlanta last fall.
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All told, these are heady days for soccer in the Peach State. But there’s a relevant tie to the state’s soccer past in play as well. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, which was the first year women’s soccer was included in the Games. The USWNT won the inaugural gold medal at Sanford Stadium, which hosted the semifinal and medal games for both the men’s and women’s bracket.
“For us, it’s a perfect window of time,” McAlpine told ESPN. “I think we’ve got to think about the idea of college athletics, college soccer, these women getting an opportunity to showcase themselves. We are trying to get more eyes on the college women’s game and make it more relevant. And so this also gives us the opportunity to push that forward as well.”
A plan is one thing. But execution is quite another. So Brooks went to Tanner Stines, Georgia’s associate AD who oversees facilities, with a simple request.
“Don’t freak out.”
Sanford Stadium hosted the medal games for men’s and women’s soccer during the 1996 Summer Olympics. David Cannon/Allsport/Getty ImagesTo Stines’ credit, there was no freakout. In fact, the request was simply part of business as usual.”We are in the business of not saying no to anything,” Stines told ESPN. “We’re saying ‘how can we best achieve the goals of this department?'”Helping matters was the fact that remaking Sanford Stadium is something Georgia had recent experience with. A concert co-headlined by Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan was held there in April, and the process for setting that event up — which included constructing a stage, sound rigging and more — made repurposing the football stadium for fútbol look like a relative walk in the park.”We’ve hosted two concerts now, 10 years apart in Sanford, and we just hosted one this past April,” Stines stated. “We built an entire stadium show, start to finish, had the thing and broke it back down in six days, so when we got into the conversation about using the venue for an athletic space … I don’t think it felt as daunting.”That doesn’t mean there weren’t plenty of wrinkles. Replacing the usual field goal uprights with soccer goals was a big one, particularly removing and boxing up the hydraulic goalposts. The human logistical concerns of a major campus event on a Thursday night — parking, traffic, etc. — will require more attention than usual.But the most unique twist was likely managing the matter of field size. Because Sanford Stadium — iconic hedges and all — was designed for gridiron football, the pitch for Thursday’s game would need to follow specific dimensional constraints. NCAA rules allow for a range of permissible pitch dimensions, however, and it was just a matter of working out the coach’s preferences for possible field proportion compromises.But McAlpine possesses a more laissez-faire attitude toward the condensed field.”The field size, yeah, it’s difficult, but it’s still the [same] game,” he stated. “We deal with different field sizes all the time, so this is no different in that regard.”McAlpine was also uniquely qualified to help manage the process. Before coming to Athens, he was the head man at USC, where he coached the Trojans in a number of games played at the cavernous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during the 2020-21 season. McAlpine was also involved in one of the current records the Bulldogs are trying to beat — the most-attended regular season game in NCAA women’s soccer history came in 2017, when his USC squad faced UCLA (interestingly, James Madison’s head coach Joshua Walters Sr. was also a part of that game, serving as the Bruins’ associate head coach).”I think I could give them insight into things that we experience as we as a school and program and athletic department really think about putting it on,” McAlpine stated. “So when we talk to players, we talk to the team, and we talk to the people working the game — ‘Hey, these are the things you’re going to have to think about.”No detail, however small, was spared in figuring out the setup.”Even as crazy as it sounds: camera placement. What side of the stadium do we use to maximize the viewing audience as well as the audience there?”𝐀 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 🐶⚽️Our head Coach @Kmcdane joined @jeffdantzlertv to preview Soccer in Sanford this Thursday in Athens!#GoDawgs 🐾 pic.twitter.com/6VtNV1JOIx
— Georgia Soccer (@UGASoccer) August 18, 2026
While Sanford Stadium has hosted soccer before, there is one element of the 1996 Olympics matches that Georgia fans might not want to re-create. The stadium’s famous hedges, the source of its well-known nickname, were removed for the Games, producing the surreal scene of a hedge-less Sanford.
Fret not, Bulldog fans. The shrubbery is staying. The stadium’s classic “Between the Hedges” look will be maintained Thursday night.
“The hedges,” Stines validated, “are not being messed with for this game.”
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