Karen Shelton Stadium - Facilities - University of North Carolina Athletics

Karen Shelton Stadium

Gameday Information
Parking
Camps
Field Hockey Home Page

Karen Shelton Stadium is the first UNC athletic playing facility to be named in honor of a woman. It is the only UNC facility named for a female coach and the first named for a then-current head coach. It also marked just the second time in school history that an individual will coach in a facility named for him or her. The first was the Dean E. Smith Center, where Smith coached the men's basketball team for 11 and a half seasons between the building's opening in 1986 and his retirement in 1997.

Among hundreds of buildings on the UNC campus, Shelton Stadium is one of just a handful named for individual women. Among the others are Carmichael, Kenan and Spencer dorms, the Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art, the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, the UNC School of Nursing's Carrington Hall and the Mary Ellen Jones Building at UNC Hospitals. (Other campus buildings are named after families or multiple individuals.)

The Tar Heels moved into the new, state-of-the-art facility in August 2018. The Carolina Blue chairback seats accommodate 900 fans, with more seating on the grass around the field for a total capacity of 1,000. The playing area includes a massive videoboard, European-soccer inspired benches and a three-level press box.

The turf field is top-of-the-line and is a rarity among collegiate fields in being FIH-certified, attesting that it meets the high standards required for international competition. UNC's team building provides more than 10,000 square feet of space and includes home and visitor locker rooms, a team meeting room/theater, a coaches' office, a sports medicine room, and an area for team meals and functions.