High school to get new stadium

This past season football fields around the City League received turf fields, which was a big deal.

Well a high school in – you guessed it, Texas – is getting a new field as well. And that’s an understatement.

In September construction on Allen High School’s new football stadium will begin. Allen is located about 30 miles north of Dallas. The stadium which will hold 18,000 seats will cost an estimated 59.6 million dollars to build.

The new stadium will have two large scoreboards, a video screen and a sunken horseshoe design to go along with a two level press box. It will also include a “Wall of Honor” plaza, a wrestling workout room, an indoor golf hitting area, multiple concession stands and six sets of restrooms.

The stadium will reserve 4,000 seats in the end zone for students, and 1,000 seats for the band. That must be one heck of a band…certainly has to be one of the largest.

Not that this will be the only nice thing about the school’s facilities. Allen already has an existing multi-purpose athletic building, a natatorium, and state-of-the-art practice fields.

Not bad for a high school if you ask me. From what I’ve been able to gather it seems like “super schools” are the thing in down there. Instead of building multiple schools in a district, they just build a few big ones.

While this gives you the opportunity to see some big-time, high-profile athletes early on, does it take away from the experience of participating or watching high school sports? At these schools there may be over 500 kids trying out for 100 spots on a varsity roster. Needless to say, several of these kids will never get to experience what it was like to play sports in high school.

So, should the City League and area schools like Maize, Goddard, Andover and Andover Central all just consolidate? Make like 15 schools into, let’s say two?

Now that would be wild.