Private donations to renovate Big Elk’s Memorial Stadium

Details

Published on Thursday, 09 February 2012 14:06

Derek Brown
Daily Elk Citian

Another season of Big Elk football is in the past. The Elk City soccer team’s seasons are just around the corner. Both groups of athletes get time off. The playing field at Memorial Stadium does not.

The field has taken a beating from two sports in two different seasons. The Football Booster Club is proposing a privately funded renovation project that will renovate Memorial Stadium.

The first phase of the project will consist of artificial turf and a new track surface. Later parts of the renovations will remove existing ticket booths and relocate existing scoreboard. It will provide a new central ticket booth, and a new fence at the south property line. 

There will be minor renovations to the visitor’s existing field house, visitor’s toilets, and janitor’s room. More minor renovations will renovate the intermediate high’s existing field house, and the girl’s dressing room. The privately funded project will construct a new press box for visiting coach, visiting radio crew, new high school football dressing room, strength training room, coaches offices, and a new indoor practice field. 

“We want to take care of a well-used facility in Big Elk’s Stadium that hasn’t had anything done to it, that I know of, since they built the present varsity field house back in 1979,” said Bill Weatherly, Elk City Athletic Director. “They are in dire need of renovation and basically they’re just in miserable condition. It’s time that we do something about it.”

The new track surface and the artificial turf will cost around $1 million. Those two renovations will be completed first. The turf will save approximately $50,000 a year on maintenance. 

“We feel like the first thing that needs to happen is the turf field and a new surface on the track. Talking with the coaches we feel like the more students will be served quicker by going with the field,” said Weatherly. “With the drought conditions that Elk City has suffered in the last year, and continues this year, I believe that water is going to be a crucial factor. You can’t maintain the fields if you’re not going to get to water.”

The turf will also help to reduce athletic injuries. Dr. Bill Barnhill of Amarillo did a study of the injuries on a natural grass field and on a turf field. The natural grass fields had over 40 injuries every 10 games. The artificial turf fields had 20 injuries in 10 games. 

“The natural turf has proven to be safer than real grass. It requires no upkeep other than grooming the trash off of it. We feel like it will affect more kids’ lives than anything else that we do out at that complex right now. We’re here to service the students first,” said Weatherly. “As soon as we get that done our next venture will be to attack the two field house situations.” 

The new entrance into Memorial Stadium will be as centrally located as possible on the south side of the field. It will have a new fence and a new ticket booth. 

“We want to do a decorative ticket booth,” Weatherly said.

The timeline on the renovations will be whenever the funds are acquired.

“(As) quickly as we can get to it. I can’t start anything until we have the money in place to do it. We’re trying to do this privately because we don’t want to interfere with the bond issue that Mr. (Buddy) Wood wants to put forward,” said Weatherly.