Playing on new turf: Rogers football taking home games to Mead district’s Union Stadium

Trivia question: When was the last time a high school in the Spokane Public Schools District played an actual home football game?

Yes, yes. They all play home football games every year. But when was the last time they played a home game on their own campus?

Those games have been rare since Joe Albi Stadium opened in 1950 and Lewis and Clark, Ferris, North Central, Shadle Park and Rogers all made its artificial turf their home field. Mead and Mt. Spokane moved into their own new football facility just this year.

Longtime fans remember Mead playing a game on its own field back in the day, but newer Mt. Spokane High had never known another game night until Union Stadium debuted for the season-opening game two weeks ago.

In fact, most of the city’s high schools have been renovated or rebuilt since the last time a home football game was played on campus.

“I know they used to try to play one every once in a while,” new Greater Spokane League Director Ken VanSickle said. “They always liked to do it for a nonleague game. But it’s been awhile.”

Thursday night games under the lights and Friday tripleheaders were commonplace at Albi Stadium for seven decades. The last on-campus home game to be featured in these pages was a nonleague North Central hosted game against Cheney – a game the Blackhawks dominated, 38-15 – and that was the first time NC had hosted a game in 26 years.

“Our kids really liked playing their home games at Albi,” Rogers athletics director Aaron Brecek said. “And I think it allowed for even more people to see Rogers football. Fans would come early for their game or stay late and watch some of our game.

“It’s actually pretty common for schools to share a stadium.”

Seattle and Tacoma each have shared facilities for high school football and so do their suburbs. Even Yakima has one facility, Zaepfel Stadium, for its two high schools.

Albi allowed Spokane schools to have an all-weather surface to play on and lights to play under. And to have more seating than any high school football game could ever want – even for a state playoff game.

“It’s not quite the same,” Brecek allowed. “It’s not on campus for any of us. We had to take a bus to every game. And we don’t have our own locker room there. It is a tradeoff.

“In a way, I guess it is a little bit of a disadvantage. You don’t have that atmosphere you get from having a game on your own campus and having the game in your own neighborhood.”

Now, with Albi closed and plans for a new multiuse stadium being hammered out, Spokane schools are looking at a couple seasons as road warriors – where even their home games will be on another school’s home field.

There is no home-field advantage if you play the game on the visiting team’s turf.

Rogers will play its home games at the Mead district’s new home field, Union Stadium.

“We had talked about playing our game with Shadle Park here,” Brecek said. “We don’t have lights on our field, so that means it would have to be played in the afternoon.

“But COVID restrictions got in the way. For one thing, we don’t have the cameras you would need to be able to stream the game online. And the restrictions on who can get in to watch the game and how many people can be there just made it too much to try to do this year. We still want to do it, but we want to do it when we can bring in our home fans to enjoy the game – that’s why you want to do a game at home. We’ll try again this fall.”

Brecek said the school is in the process of installing cameras in both its main and auxiliary gyms so that indoor games can be streamed online – for volleyball now and for basketball and wrestling if those sports are allowed to be played in the third of three spring sports seasons.

“The real challenge is that we need to be in the next phase in order to be able to play basketball or wrestle,” he said. “We have some time to get there.”

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Steve Christilaw can be reached at steve.christilaw@gmail.com