BC History Highlight: Memorial Stadium

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Wednesday, August 7, 2024

By Deanna Rea

The Bakersfield College Memorial Stadium was not an easy feat for those credited with its creation, but certainly a triumph! The stadium was the first structure completed on Bakersfield College's Panorama campus, and the construction plans were meticulously assembled. It required intensive research and close attention to detail by Theron McCuen, then Superintendent of the Kern County Union High School and Junior College District and its Board of Trustees, and then BC President Ralph Prator, who contributed significantly to realizing Grace Bird's vision of a college on a hill.

According to the BC Archives Newsletter of April 2006, Prator appointed Bakersfield High School Athletic Director, J.B. 'Cap' Haralson to coordinate the construction of facilities and fields for physical education and athletics in 1953. With a community of officials at the drawing board, Haralson had a visionary team to help create a state-of-the-art stadium for Bakersfield College. The concept of constructing a double-decked stadium began with Theron Taber, then assistant to the Superintendent, who felt inspired by the stadium at Rice University in Houston. Later that year, Haralson recruited his respected friend Gil Bishop, the BC basketball coach to also help assist with the project (Covey 3).

As the pressures of designing a new campus settled in, conflicts were quick to rise. During the planning stages, Prator entered an intense debate through an exchange of letters regarding the decision to include a track inside the football stadium. As recorded in the Archives Newsletter of Fall 2015, Prator wrote, "...the implications (over the inclusion of the track inside the stadium) are far more serious than would permit the justifying of a conclusion on a premise of 'I prefer it this way.' If expense were no item, I would favor two and separate stadiums-one for track and one for football" (Mayer 2). Ultimately, passion prevailed and the decision to include a track in the football stadium was finalized on May 2nd, 1952.

When disaster struck in 1952, Haralson saw an opportunity. The genesis of a first-rate track began with an earthquake that shook the San Joaquin Valley, providing the raw material of brick rubble from the destroyed Courthouse. Haralson, who later became chairman of the AAU Men's Track and Field Committee, realized his dream of a crushed brick track (later supplemented with volcanic ash), modeled after the historic Olympic Games stadium in Helsinki, Finland.

Memorial Stadium finally reached completion in the Fall of 1955, just before the remainder of the campus opened to accept students in 1956. The final plans for the stadium consisted of 16,546 seats with the potential to seat an audience of 30,000. The total cost of the stadium, according to reports dated July 1957, was estimated to be $1,159,569.04 (that is over ten million dollars today).

The excitement amongst the community for the grand opening of Memorial Stadium reached record-breaking heights across the valley. On September 23, 1955, the Renegades challenged Pasadena City College for a game of football that attracted an audience of over 16,000-the largest crowd to ever watch a junior college game at the time! The Renegade football team would grow to become a highly successful and beloved program in the Kern County community. In 1969, Bakersfield College set a national record for JC season football attendance with over 100,000 fans coming to cheer on their local team.

Soon after its grand opening, Memorial Stadium saw its first world record broken in 1956 when Mike Agostini, of the West Indies and Fresno State College, ran the 220-yard dash in 20.1 seconds. Impressed with the unique qualities of the running surface, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) selected Bakersfield to host five National AAU Track and Field Championships. By 1970, approximately ten world records, twenty-five meet records and four American records have been broken, and five more world records were equaled under the lights of Memorial Stadium.

As news of the achievements at Memorial Stadium spread, fame and support increased for the college, and soon the stadium would come to host a series of exciting events and games. Some events of note include: the Kern County Shrine Potato Bowl game, the annual Jr. Rose Bowl Game, and a professional football game (featuring the Dallas Cowboys), which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charities.

In 2015, BC played host to much more than football and track, when for the first time in stadium history, an intercollegiate soccer team played all its home games on the football field-turned-soccer pitch. In 2017, the stadium traded the turf for ice to host its first Winter Classic with the Bakersfield Condors. The two-day event began with an alumni-celebrity hockey game featuring several television stars, hockey legends, and musicians. The next day, the Condors braved heavy rains to take on the Ontario Reign for a riveting outdoor hockey game.

As times change, so do the standards for competition surfaces. In April of 2019, the Stadium faced its first set of renovations with funding through Measure J which included updates to the main playing surface. The original grass surface was replaced with a fast Bermuda grass turf and the track was upgraded with a new synthetic surface. In addition to the changes made to the athletic fields, there were other cosmetic improvements to remain modern and competitive.

While expressing his thoughts in a letter addressed to Dr. James Young in 1993, Gil Bishop said it best: "...there are too many interesting events that would not have been held had there been no Memorial Stadium." Mr. Bishop's words still ring true today as we continue to prosper and strengthen our community through countless celebrations, traditions of grandeur, and championship battles.

"Thus, it becomes obvious that to outline the history of Bakersfield's Memorial Stadium would take reams of paper, but just what we've touched upon emphasizes the need to preserve what well might be Bakersfield and Kern County's most noted structure," Bishop expresses. "Standing where it does, overlooking the city, it must always reflect the pride that has caused more than one proud citizen's first words to a visitor to be 'Come and see our stadium!'"

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