It is just under a three-mile drive from Valley Heights High School campus to the old wooden Charles Steele Memorial Stadium in nearby Waterville.
And for 42 years, that short route had become very familiar for the Mustang football team.
With each passing fall, it was the same routine. A bus took the Mustangs out from the school, down the two-lane drive lined with cornfields, and then a short drive west on State Highway 9 toward the aging stadium in the heart of Waterville.
But as fall approaches in 2010, the old wooden stands of Charles Steele Memorial Stadium will, for the first time, will sit vacant through the months of fall.
Now, the stands at the old stadium have been removed, but the old purple and white press box remains. It sits alone behind the Valley Heights Elementary School off Lincoln Ave. in Waterville.
“It’s kind of bittersweet,” head football coach Tony Trimble said.
Last season, construction was completed on a new venue for Mustang football. And now, a modern, 1,000-person capacity football stadium sits three miles down the road, awaiting its first full season of football.
“You’re very excited about the new facility and the upgrades,” Trimble added. “But it’s also kind of bitter when you leave a place like that.”
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That place, the home to Mustang football since the two schools from Waterville and Blue Rapids consolidated in 1966, has become a place of comfort and stability for both the team and the community, as football seasons have come and left throughout the years.
But even before to the consolidation, Charles Steele Memorial Stadium was used as the Waterville High School football stadium, as early as the 1920s.
“I’ve seen pictures with [Ford] Model Ts circled around that field as a boundary for football games,” USD 498 Superintendent John Bergkamp said. “So it had to go back into the [19]20s…That particular field and that area has been used for 80 years or so.”
Through all those years, it was a place that became a second home for Charles Steele, longtime football fan and elementary principal in the USD 498 district. He developed a lifelong passion for the area of Waterville and Valley Heights high school.
But in 2002, after a lifetime of dedication to the area, he lost a battle with pancreatic cancer.
“He loved Valley Heights,” Bergkamp said. “He loved high school football. His passion was Valley Heights [football] first and then K-State football second. He just brought a lot love and passion to the district and the boys and kids.”
And so during the 2003 football season, the old field with the wooden stands, the one that hosted a long history of the game and school he loved, was dedicated to in his name.
Yet as the seasons came and passed, and the stadium aged through the years, it became clear that either major renovations needed to be made, or a new stadium need to be built.
“You kind of get set in your ways and like things to go the same year in and year out,” Trimble said. “We had stability with that old field.”
But he agreed it was time to move on.
“I think the biggest thing I remember about the old stadium were the dim lights,” Trimble said. “They were old, and they weren’t very high, they just didn’t have the brightness.”
Last fall, those low dim lights turned off for the final time.
That final game came on Sept 18 last year as they Mustangs fell to Centralia 42-14. Following the final whistle of the game, the Mustangs made one final walk around the old cinder track, in honor of the history and all that their longtime home has meant to the program and the towns of Blue Rapids and Waterville.
“That was a bittersweet moment having the last game there,” Bergkamp said. “People walked [around] the track and made a circle, and then turned the lights out for the last time.”
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These lights were much brighter.
And one week after the old dim lights of Charles Steele Memorial Stadium turned off for the final time in Waterville, they stood prominent and tall, hovering over the high school building down below.
The scoreboard on the south side stadium was powerfully lit with its bright red bulbs, and could be seen from the very same highway the Mustangs used to travel during their trips to Waterville for so many years.
Sitting in the new purple trimmed metal stands that September evening, principal Don Potter couldn’t be happier as he watched a new era of Mustang football begin alongside a near capacity crowd.
“It was definitely a sense of pride, and a sense of accomplishment,” Potter said in reflection while sitting in his office this week. “It was a sense of…togetherness. We had great attendance, and it was something that for me, I was really prideful of our accomplishment and what we were able to do together.”
Potter sat that opening night, and watched the Mustangs defend their new home, winning in convincing fashion by defeating Republic County 46-20—the first of three straight wins in the new stadium.
“I think they [the team] always get excited for games, but I think there was just a little added, something there that you could feel,” Trimble said of his team that night. “You could feel it being around them. It gives me goose bumps just talking about it.”
The victory that night was the final step in a process that began over a year-and-a-half before.
It began with a school board meeting in 2008. The USD 498 board, along with principal Potter and coach Trimble, decided a new stadium was finally needed for their high school football program after spending 42 years playing in Waterville.
Not only was a football stadium already in the original plans when Valley Heights was built in 1966, but throughout the years, the tedious trips to Waterville and dated memorial stadium facilities proved enough to approve plans for a new home.
“I think a lot of the reason to build it is obviously for our kids and our community to enjoy,” Potter said. “We were unable to host a track meet. Kids for track practice and football [practice] and those types of things, we had to transport kids, or they were having to drive to Waterville to practice.”
So after seven years as principal, Potter felt it was time. Eventually, a school board vote passed and the communities of Waterville and Blue Rapids saw construction for a new $2.1 million stadium at the high school begin.
The stadium was funded through a half-cent sales tax increase in both Blue Rapids and Waterville, as well as a bond issued.
Fast forward a year-and-a-half, and those problems are now solved in the form of a modern facility set neatly behind the main high school campus.
“The community was graciously supportive and really wanted to see us have a facility out here,” Potter said. “So our community obviously pulled together and said that is what we want for our school system.”
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Now, this autumn the Mustangs have already had a taste of the new stadium, and are set to open their first full season of football at their new home. Coach Trimble and his Mustangs have began their summer practices at the new stadium this week in preparation for their 2010 season.
“The kids have kind of got used to it now,” Trimble said. “Our younger kids and our junior high kids did not get to play on it last year, we just had varsity games on it so I think there is going to be an added excitement for those younger kids when they finally have the opportunity to play on it.”
Bergkamp said there is no plan in place to transfer the name of Charles Steele Memorial Stadium to the new facility, and that a sign bearing the name “Valley Heights Sports Complex” will be added to the new press box.
Valley Heights begins their 2010 season on Sept. 3 against Onega
It is a season that Bergkamp and the cities of Blue Rapids and Waterville have been looking forward too.
“The excitement of that new stadium was the feeling that we accomplished something through community support,” Bergkamp said. “The feeling that everybody was in this together, and that both Blue Rapids and Waterville came together to really commit themselves to a first class facility for kids.
"And that’s it. It’s the kids.”
