Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Utah polls are closed. Results will be delayed until vote center lines clear

Real Salt Lake’s New School Emulates European Model

Lee Hale
/
KUER
The new Real Salt Lake Academy High School in southern Salt Lake County is expected to be finished by the time school starts on August 22nd.

A different kind of charter school opens in Salt Lake County next month. Real Salt Lake Academy, a STEM high school which also serves as a training ground for future professional soccer players.

Although school starts on August 22nd, the new campus located in Herriman still needs a lot of work. Crews are working at what looks like double speed, prepping the facility for its first 300 students.

 

The school's director Ryan Marchant is confident it will be ready in time. He shows me around the future cafeteria, gym, classrooms.

 

In many respects this school is meant to feel like any other school. But, connected to the back is a massive indoor practice facility, which has dirt floor currently but will soon have two full sized soccer fields.

 

An artist's rendering of the new Herriman campus.
Credit Real Salt Lake Academy

“It’s the largest steel-framed free standing building in North America without a pole in it," Marchant says. "It’s massive, I think they were saying you could fit six or seven 747s in here.”

 

The indoor field will serve as Real Salt Lake’s training ground for the Winter months, but it will also get use from the students. In particular the 50 who will be living on campus and competing in teenage professional soccer leagues.

 

Following a European soccer model, this academy will serve as a feeder for Real Salt Lake. Promising young talent discovered by scouts will move to the school here in Utah.

 

Marchant says that while these students are unique, he hopes the 250 other students from the community will help create a comfortable, relatively normal, high school environment.

 

At least, as normal as school can be with professional athletes practicing a few yards away.  

 

Lee Hale began listening to KUER while he was teaching English at a Middle School in West Jordan (his one hour commute made for plenty of listening time). Inspired by what he heard he applied for the Kroc Fellowship at NPR headquarters in DC and to his surprise, he got it. Since then he has reported on topics ranging from TSA PreCheck to micro apartments in overcrowded cities to the various ways zoo animals stay cool in the summer heat. But, his primary focus has always been education and he returns to Utah to cover the same schools he was teaching in not long ago. Lee is a graduate of Brigham Young University and is also fascinated with the way religion intersects with the culture and communities of the Beehive State. He hopes to tell stories that accurately reflect the beliefs that Utahns hold dear.
KUER is listener-supported public radio. Support this work by making a donation today.