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Manvel High School Athletics


A DEBUIT WORTH THE WAIT

A Debuit Worth the Wait

STEVE COLLINS

The Alvin Sun | 6/19/2018

PHOTO CREDIT: The Alvin Sun

The 2018 high school football season kicks off in a little more than two months and with the upcoming gridiron campaign also comes the debut of the Alvin ISD’s new $42 million Heritage Athletic Complex, which comprises the new football stadium, Freedom Field, the Legacy Field House venue and the multipurpose Liberty Alumni Hall.

Freedom Field holds a capacity of 10,800 with 5,400 seats on both the home and visitor’s sides.

“This means when there are two AISD teams playing at the facility in the future, if you have a season ticket on the home side, you can get that same exact ticket on the visitor’s side because it’s duplicate seating,” said Robert Wilcox, AISD director of facilities and special events. “We planned it that way, because we wanted the fans, community and people that follow the team to feel the same, whether they’re visitor or home.

“The only difference is one of them gets to look at the press box and the other has it at their back. There may be a few facilities in Texas that are larger, but not as nice.”

Other Freedom Field features include concourses on both the home and visitor’s sides, stations for both security and first aid, a 40-foot plus video board, a two-level press box with dedicated spaces for coaches and scouts from other high schools and universities, boxes for the announcer and the timer and areas for the media and scoreboard operation.

The newly installed field turf will include a special element, as well, Wilcox said. “There are very few fields like this in the country,” he added. “Speaking with the field turf representatives this week, this was the first one they were putting in that has a fiber that will not show glare at night. On most of your fields, when you turn on the lights, it looks like it might be wet.

“This is supposed to be a new surface, where you won’t see any of that glare or shininess when you turn the lights on.”

The Manvel Mavericks will serve as the stadium’s inaugural hosts to Clear Lake in the new venue Aug. 30 with a 7 p.m. kickoff. Both the Mavs and Shadow Creek will use the field as their home stadium for 2018, while the Alvin Yellowjackets will play their home slate at the newly renovated Alvin ISD Memorial Stadium facility.

“Who knows what the future holds,” Wilcox said. “That will be the athletic department and coach’s call whether Alvin will play any home games there.”

Located in the north end zone, the Legacy Field House facility includes a field house, athletic offices, officials’ dressing rooms and players' locker rooms. There won’t be any actual lockers in the latter area with both the home and visiting rooms sporting 72 spaces.

“We visited other areas with some having actual lockers that went all the way from the floor to the ceiling,” Wilcox said. “We felt that limited you with your space, so what we wanted were benches around the wall and places above where the athletes would sit, where they still have an area to store their items.

“This gives you the opportunity if it’s a smaller player, you can get more in an area and if it’s a large player, he’s not locked into a locker that’s too small for him to fit into. We planned it this way, because we felt we could get more bodies in this way.”

The Liberty Alumni Hall, which is located in the south end zone, has the ability to seat 500 people in a banquet setting and 800 for lecture events. Wilcox said the hall already has more than 20 events lined up there over the next few months.

“We can do a lot of different events in there,” he said. “We have a full service kitchen, as well as video screens, so you can bring any kind of data you want for any type of video or production.”

The Heritage Complex will also soon include a 5K running course with the ability to host district cross country meets.

“It actually goes around one of our ponds,” Wilcox said. “We hope to eventually tie it into the Meridiana course, which would make it a 10K course.”

Alvin ISD is hosting an open house for the new Heritage Complex in Iowa Colony Thursday at 4:30 p.m. Guests will be treated to an official ribbon cutting, hosted by the Alvin/Manvel and Pearland Chambers of Commerce and a tour of the entire complex.

The ribbon cutting will take place inside the Libert... Click here to read full article

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