When the San Diego Jewish Academy in Carmel Valley commissioned a local construction firm in 2006 to build an outdoor sports complex on a parcel of land carved into a picturesque hillside, it was called the “Ballfield for Kids.”
Nothing about it becoming a coveted training facility for some of the planet’s top soccer teams.
Switzerland’s national team is the latest guest at the school with 500 students from pre-K through 12th grade, using the 56-acre campus as its World Cup training base for the past month.
An unused softball diamond was sodded over to extend the natural grass playing surface, a 4,500-square-foot tented outdoor gym was erected on the baseball diamond at the opposite end, and a school meeting room was converted to a media center. The Swiss are staying just down the street at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar. They played a tune-up match against Australia just down the freeway at Snapdragon Stadium.
It’s worked out. After a shaky 1-1 tie against Qatar in the opener, the Swiss recorded a pair of wins, including 2-1 against co-host Canada, to win Group B and advance to a very winnable round of 32 match against Algeria in Vancouver on Thursday.
“We are very happy about all the work done in advance before the World Cup,” said Damien Mollard, the team operations manager for Switzerland’s soccer federation. “From the beginning, we had a very good relationship and good exchanges with the San Diego Jewish Academy.
“I mean, we have everything that we asked for and we needed. We are very happy. All the players are also happy about the facilities, about the equipment, about the gym, and the pitch is in very good condition.”
Ah yes, the pitch.
It is quietly regarded among the best in the county, maybe the country.
A former San Diego Jewish Academy girls soccer coach worked in operations for major international soccer events, and in 2009 she suggested to the Mexican men’s national team that it train there ahead of a match in San Diego. Team representatives toured the secluded, secure campus, felt the soft ocean breeze, rubbed their fingers across the pristine grass and nodded.
Word spread from there, and over the past decade, dozens of teams have graced the Ballfield for Kids.
The U.S. men’s and women’s national teams have trained there. So have Chile and Costa Rica, along with Mexico’s Club America and Spain’s Real Betis. So have a half-dozen Major League Soccer teams ahead of games against San Diego FC. Germany’s Borussia Dortmund held its preseason camp there in 2023.
Fiji’s national rugby team has been there.
The NFL’s Tennessee Titans have, too.
It’s also under consideration as a training base for the 2028 Olympics, with Snapdragon Stadium hosting 11 soccer matches.
“When I came here for my interview in 2022,” said Adam Benmoise, SDJA’s director of auxiliary programs, “they showed me the field for the first time, and I was like, ‘This is incredible. This is a world-class field.’
“It was just built properly. They didn’t cut corners. They put the right base underneath. They put the right grass on top. And we’ve maintained it really, really well to a professional standard. The teams choose us for several reasons. The quality of the pitch is No. 1.”
The school initially contracted a turf consultant, then hired a full-time, in-house agronomist who, coaches joked, was uber protective of his baby. They would receive daily emails with detailed weather forecasts, moisture levels, soil temperature, grass height and whether they risked damaging blades by practicing. In 2009, the Sports Turf Managers Association named it the nation’s top high school field.
Benmoise recounted an exchange with B.J. Callaghan when he was interim coach for the U.S. men and came to train at SDJA.
Said Benmoise: “BJ says, ‘They told me we were coming to a high school, and I was like: ‘What do you mean? Really? You’ve got all these (youth clubs in San Diego) known for soccer. What is this high school?’ My players and I got to the gate, and jaws dropped. We could not believe this was here.”
Callaghan is now head coach for Nashville SC of MLS. He has taken his club there as well.
Switzerland’s time at SDJA has been largely quiet and uneventful, other than one ill-fated social media post by the federation.
It showed an aerial view of the complex noting various training areas. The brushy hillside surrounding the field on three sides was marked in red as “snake area.”
It was meant to poke fun, team officials later clarified, at a story in a Swiss newspaper that referenced rattlesnakes in the San Diego area. The post had the opposite effect, instantly going viral and inciting visions of venomous reptiles slithering across the grass during practice.
“People in Switzerland understood the joke,” press officer Sergio Affuso told The Athletic. “But maybe, abroad, they didn’t.”
Benmoise is just happy to have somebody there.
When he was hired, he immediately began angling for SDJA to become an official World Cup training base, which meant moving graduation into the gym because FIFA requires no activity on the field in the four weeks prior. Once they received FIFA’s blessing, they hosted pre-draw visits from Italy, England, Germany and the Netherlands. U.S. Soccer also considered it.
Italy ultimately didn’t qualify, and the other three were drawn into groups on the other side of the country. U.S. Soccer picked the sprawling Great Park complex in Irvine, which is closer to SoFi Stadium, site of two matches and possibly a third in the knockout stage.
Iran, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt were sent to the West Coast instead, and Benmoise started to wonder if they’d have any takers and receive $500,000-plus in rent from FIFA.
Then the Swiss, who had their group matches on the West Coast, toured the secluded, secure campus, felt the soft ocean breeze, rubbed their fingers across the pristine grass and nodded.
It also helped that starting goalkeeper Gregor Kobel plays for Borussia Dortmund.
“For the needs that we have, it’s just a very good place,” said Mollard, the team operations director. “We checked with previous teams that had training camps here. We talked with Dortmund, we talked to players who played there to get feedback.
“We had a good fit from the beginning, and it worked. So we are happy.”
