This spring, Northwestern softball will play its home games away from home.
Although all eyes are on Northwestern’s new Kip & Sara Kirkpatrick Stadium, which cost $20 million to build, it will not be ready for the upcoming 2026 season. Instead, the Wildcats will play their home games at Parkway Bank Sports Complex in Rosemont, Illinois, according to a press release issued by NU on Tuesday. The venue is also known as The Ballpark.
This temporary relocation has several implications for Northwestern’s program, both for its upcoming season and the future of the new stadium. Inside NU breaks it all down.
What is The Ballpark?
The Ballpark is approximately a 31-minute drive from Sharon J. Drysdale Field, Northwestern’s venue from 1979 to 2025. Located on Jennie Finch Way, a street named after Olympic champion softball pitcher Jennie Finch, The Ballpark is no stranger to high-level softball. The venue hosted eight games during the inaugural 2025 Athletes Unlimited Softball League season, a four-team professional softball league backed by the MLB.
Opening in 2011, The Ballpark also hosted previous renditions of Athletes Unlimited seasons, as well as championships for the now-defunct National Pro Fastpitch (NPF) league, Illinois girls’ high school softball tournaments, and the Big East tournament.
With a capacity of 2,000, The Ballpark will be an upgrade in size from Drysdale Field, which seated 800. It will also likely seat more than Kirkpatrick Stadium, which plans to have a capacity of 1,326. An average attendance figure was not made public during the 2025 AUSL season, but the league reported that all but one of its Rosemont games were sold out with 2,013 fans. It is to be seen whether that audience can be replicated at Northwestern games, though the aforementioned numbers indicate a general interest in softball in the area.
Northwestern will play 12 games at The Ballpark, which includes Big Ten series matchups against Oregon, Michigan, Michigan State and Minnesota. Its home opener will be on March 26 against Oregon, while its final game at The Ballpark will be May 3 against Minnesota. Tickets for games will be sold on a single-game basis.
Northwestern’s tentative home schedule:
- March 26 to 28 vs. Oregon
- April 3 to 5 vs. Michigan
- April 17 to 19 vs. Michigan State
- May 1 to 3 vs. Minnesota
This aforementioned schedule is subject to change based on television broadcast plans. After lacrosse revealed its schedule on Jan. 6, softball is the only Northwestern sport that has not released its schedule for the 2025-26 academic year.
What does this mean for Kirkpatrick Stadium?
The obvious implication of Northwestern’s relocation is that construction of its new Evanston stadium would expand beyond the 2026 season. When NU initially announced plans for a new stadium in March 2024, it said that completion of the venue would be anticipated by spring 2026.
Construction for Kirkpatrick Stadium began in September 2025, after the Evanston City Council officially approved the project during its Sept. 8 meeting. The approval was originally scheduled for Aug. 25, but got delayed due to Evanston residents’ concerns about stadium lighting at night and traffic caused by possible construction near the Village of Wilmette.
The March 2024 announcement revealed that Northwestern trustee Harold “Kip” Kirkpatrick and his wife, Sara, contributed $5 million for the stadium. NU’s program submitted proposals in the spring of 2025 for $20 million in renovations.
Some of those renovations include increased seating capacity, upgraded dugouts, better lighting and sound, the addition of a press box and a new clubhouse and hospitality suite. In June 2025, Kip Kirkpatrick told Inside NU that a motivating factor behind the new stadium was to turn Northwestern into a nationally-renowned program.
“We are building facilities that are competitive with any program anywhere,” Kirkpatrick said. “We want to beat Oklahoma and Texas, and we’re going to put our young women in a position to play in the same type of environment.”
However, it is now clear that these upgrades will have to wait, at least for another season.
