Hodges Stadium

Hodges Stadium sits on the south Jacksonville University of North Florida campus — a 1,300-acre nature-preserve-and-academic campus with the Sawmill Slough Preserve woodlands wrapping the stadium. The blocks immediately around the stadium are UNF academic buildings, residence halls, and parking; there is no walkable pre-match restaurant cluster on campus. The St. Johns Town Center, the upscale outdoor-mall lifestyle center on the south side of J. Turner Butler Boulevard, sits about 10 minutes west and has the closest dense restaurant cluster for visiting fans. Jacksonville Beach, with the canonical Florida-east-coast beach-town walkable downtown and First Street's beach-front bars, sits 15 minutes east. The Riverside / Avondale historic neighborhood, with Five Points and King Street's walkable restaurant cluster, sits about 25 minutes northwest in the Northbank downtown corridor. The neighborhood reads as a college-campus venue with the canonical Jacksonville visitor dining destinations a short drive in any direction.

Plan to arrive about 60-75 minutes before kickoff — campus parking-lot flow at UNF is gentle on most weekday match dates but can build steadily on Sporting JAX home weekend matches, especially when an academic-calendar event at UNF overlaps. Hodges Stadium opened in 2003 as the University of North Florida's primary outdoor athletics venue, hosting UNF Ospreys track and field, soccer, and lacrosse — the stadium is widely regarded as one of the better mid-sized college soccer-and-track venues in the southeast and has hosted multiple NCAA championship and high-level track meets. Sporting JAX, Jacksonville's new USL Championship men's professional soccer club, plays its home matches at Hodges Stadium during its initial seasons in the league. The club, which launched in the late-2020s wave of USL Championship expansion, is Jacksonville's first second-tier professional men's soccer franchise. Mobile-only tickets are the norm. Bag policy and gate-open times shift season to season; confirm on the club's site before going — campus venues sometimes also have NCAA-specific bag rules that overlay the USL match-day rules.

Hodges Stadium opened in 2003 on the University of North Florida campus in south Jacksonville as the primary outdoor athletics venue for UNF Ospreys track and field, soccer, and lacrosse. The stadium is widely regarded as one of the better mid-sized college outdoor athletics venues in the southeast and has hosted multiple NCAA championship and high-level track-and-field meets. Sporting JAX, Jacksonville's new USL Championship men's professional soccer club, plays its home matches at Hodges Stadium during its initial seasons in the league. The club, which launched in the late-2020s wave of USL Championship expansion, is Jacksonville's first second-tier professional men's soccer franchise — bringing Jacksonville back into the broader American second-division soccer map. The USL Championship is the second tier of American men's professional soccer, below MLS. Capacity at Hodges sits around 12,000 in the outdoor stadium configuration. The university and the club have publicly described the Hodges arrangement as the club's initial venue, with longer-term venue plans for a dedicated soccer-specific stadium evolving as the franchise matures.