UPDATE: The Major Arena Soccer League announced March 21 that the Baltimore Blast Spring Classic outdoor game at Johnny Unitas Stadium featuring the visiting Dallas Sidekicks has been canceled due to severe weather anticipated in Baltimore on Saturday, March 23.
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The Baltimore Blast will play the first outdoor game in Major Arena Soccer League history at Towson University’s Johnny Unitas Stadium on March 23, with the game against the Dallas Sidekicks set for 11 a.m.
Home games are typically played across the street at TU Arena. The walls, glass and goals from the arena will be brought to Unitas Stadium, the home of Towson football and lacrosse. The dimensions of the field will remain the same, spanning between 30-yard lines. The game will be played on the stadium turf. General-admission tickets cost $15. Gates will open at 10 a.m.
Unitas Stadium seats roughly 11,000 fans.
“Potentially we could have one of the biggest crowds we’ve ever had if things go well,” Blast owner Ed Hale said at a news conference at Liquid Lib’s in Timonium on March 7.
Hale first got the idea to play outdoor games during the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the team to sit out MASL’s shortened 2021 campaign. That didn’t work out, but Hale kept the thought in mind. He tried again during the 2022-23 season, but construction stood in the way.
This season, it all worked out. The team was initially scheduled to play at TU Arena on March 23, but the East Atlantic Gymnastics League Championships are taking place at the arena that same day. That offered an opening for an outdoor game.
The game will be played unless challenges are presented by thunder, lightning or snow.
“It’s probably going to be, in my estimation because I’m a lucky Irishman, maybe 75, 80 degrees that day,” Hale said. “But if it’s not, we’re going to play the game anyway. And all the soccer players … that are going to playing for me and against me have been for years playing outdoors in all kinds of weather conditions.”
Longtime Blast star Jonatas Melo is still awaiting a work permit to play this season. The Brazilian midfielder is continuing to train as he awaits a resolution, but he’s excited that his teammates will get an opportunity to play at Johnny Unitas Stadium — and is still hoping to join them.
Melo mentioned that crumb rubber makes a turf football field different than the carpet the team typically plays on. He figures that his teammates will need different footwear than usual.
“I think it’s an amazing opportunity to be able to do that,” Melo said of the Blast playing outdoors. “… Just to be able to play in an outdoor stadium with so many seats, just amazing, just feels different. It’s going to be a great event and a great opportunity.”
Baltimore is currently 8-9-2 (24 points) and in fifth place in MASL’s Eastern Conference and faces an uphill battle to make the 2024 Ron Newman Cup playoffs.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it — it’s going to be really tough for us to make it, but we’re going to try,” Hale said. “… We’re going to do the best that we can to do that and represent Baltimore in a good way.”
Photo Credit: TU Photo Services
Updated March 21, 2024