ROSARITO, BC.- San Diego, California and Baja California are slowly turning red and black, just this Thursday morning they opened a Xoloitzcuintles Initiation Center (CIX in Spanish) in Rosarito to keep the canine presence growing.

The ‘Xoloitzcuintles from Caliente’ Tijuana Club currently has three different CIX campuses, the first behind the Agua Caliente Hippodrome, the second inside the CREA Municipal Sports Unit, and now another one in Rosarito, where Xolos have just arrived.

Presented in cooperation with the Rosarito Municipal Institute of Sports (IMDER), Rosarito’s CIX will train children as young as five in soccer giving them the possibility to be called in the future to be a part of the Xoloitzcuintles’ Basic Forces.

The CIX Rosarito is located inside the Profesor Andrés Luna Rodríguez Unit, just across the Colegio de Bachilleres of Baja California (COBACH) in the youngest Baja city.

In addition to the CIX in Baja California, the Tijuana Club has a soccer academy in Chula Vista, California; where Mexico and the US train together and, in time, compete for a place in the different red-and-black Mexican soccer squads.

Xolos also has a trail of stores in Tijuana, where the fans can buy the official jersey, caps, scarves and memorabilia to look like a hardcore Xolos’ fan; these stores finally branched out to Baja’s capital, Mexicali, a couple of months ago.

The canine team has been growing since it was created, back when it played on the CREA’s field before moving to the Caliente Stadium and opening the first CIX in 2009.

The Tijuana CIX now has a synthetic grass field that operates in the morning as a training center for minor teams and for kids from 5 to 15. It also has a natural grass one with official standard measures for the senior team to train before its matches throughout Mexico.

The synthetic ground is also divided into three by night to play Fut7; in addition, the CIX has a three-story building where the Basic Forces players from out of town live.

Xoloitzcuintles keeps growing and both sides of the border are slowly turning into hound territory.