Wildcat Field renamed for couple who helped fund its improvements

Wildcat Field renamed for couple who helped fund its improvements

By Trigie Ealey
Arizona Daily Wildcat
November 22, 1996

Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wildcat Field, home of the UA soccer team, will soon be named John and Helen Murphey Soccer Stadium. A formal ceremony will be held next fall during the soccer season at the field, located at 15th Street and Plumer Avenue.

Wildcat Field will be renamed for the couple whose donations made a new stadium possible.
The Arizona Board of Regents voted last month to rename Wildcat Field, at 15th Street and Plumer Avenue, where the University of Arizona soccer team plays, to the John and Helen Murphey Soccer Stadium.
Mike Sarikas, a trustee with the John and Helen Murphey Foundation, said the interest in the team relates more to the university than to soccer.
"They were interested in the university and in athletics," he said. "It didn't necessarily reflect their specific interests."
He said soccer has a good program in need of fund-raising. Other areas, such as men's basketball, have fewer problems raising money.
Soccer Coach Lisa Fraser said the team appreciates the Murphey Foundation's contribution.
"Their support has been a great addition to the university," she said. "It is a great facility. It is one of the best fields in the Pac-10."
Before the field's opening this fall, the team played at the Pima Community College field.
"The field (at Pima) is great, but it is narrow," said Fraser, coach for the past two and a half years. "This one has more room."
She said there is space to expand the current seating capacity of about 200 and perhaps add locker rooms in the future.
The Murphey's have a long history in Tucson. John Murphey, a third-generation Tucsonan, married a fellow UA student, Helen Geyer, in 1919.
For the first three years of marriage, the couple lived in a tent near what is now North Campbell Avenue and East River Road to prove their homestead claim. They later became developers of the land between the Rillito and the Catalina Mountains.
Sarikas said the Murphey's are probably best known for developments such as Broadway Village shopping center at East Broadway Boulevard and South Country Club Road, the Catalina Foothills Estates, and St. Philips in the Hills Episcopal Church, 4440 N. Campbell Ave.
John Murphey died in 1977 and Helen Murphey in 1990. Since then, the foundation has given more than $300,000 to provide a new stadium for the team. John Perrin, senior associate director of athletics business affairs, said a formal renaming ceremony would take place next fall in conjunction with the soccer season.