Home Field Advantage Plan

(a look at a more in-depth explanation)

Island park has served as our home for Football and Baseball and has been one of the most pristine well kept ball fields in all of Southwest Minnesota. We were excited this fall to be hosting soccer for the first time in addition to the football that we had already been playing there. In total, Island park was going to host 8 soccer games between Varsity/JV boys and girls. 12 Football games between Varsity,JV, and Junior high. It would be 16 different nights of events that would need to change locations. That does not include 4th-6th grade youth football programs who will also need a place to play. Unfortunately the flooding and the damage to Island park in late June have rendered the field unplayable and unable to be restored to playable conditions before our fall sports season.

Home games foster a sense of community and school spirit. They provide an opportunity for students, parents, teachers, and community members to come together and support their local team. Windom is a very special place, and we want to give our student athletes the opportunity to continue to compete in front of their home crowd. We have been extremely fortunate to have a group of community leaders come together to help assist us with a plan that will allow this to happen with minimal cost to the school district.

Solution- Soccer/Football on the Inside of the track

Football and Soccer will play home games on the track’s interior during the Fall 2024 season. This is a short-term plan that will give our students the best opportunity in this difficult time after the flood damaged Island Park.

Steps to transition the track into a makeshift football field.

1. Removal of long jump, triple jump, high jump, and pole vault areas inside the track. We will do this in a manner that does not damage the track and damages the least amount of existing grass.

2. Hauling in fill and ground preparation for laying down new sod in the areas where the field events were previously located.

3. Laying sod and irrigating the field. We will be looking for volunteers to help with this part of the project.

4. Moving Island Park goal posts to campus or installing new goal posts. We have a business in town who is willing to build us new goal posts if needed.

5. Moving in portable bleachers to ensure we have adequate spectator bleachers. We have two large sets of portable bleachers that we usually use at Island Park for visitor bleachers. We may need to see if more are available.

6. Reinstall the high jump, long jump, triple jump, and pole vault events on an area outside of the track in a location chosen by the district. This would be completed this fall to be ready for the track and field student athletes to use in the spring.

Advantages of choosing this location: 

1. Existing infrastructure

• We already have existing bleachers in place

• The bleachers we normally use as the visiting side for Football are movable and can be placed near the track for spectators as well.

• The interior of the track already has high quality grass growing.

• The interior of the track is equipped with an irrigation system that will be useful especially after we lay sod down where the field events were located.

• There is a small press box that could be used for our scoreboard operator, public address announcer, and possibly radio.

2. Proximity to the school

• We will not have to bus students across town for home events

• We plan to keep the school open during these events so spectators can come inside to use the bathroom and visit the concessions stand.

Additional notes: 

1. Scoreboard, the district currently owns a portable scoreboard that could be used:

2. Without the crows nest above the press box like at island park we will need 2 scissor lifts one for each team’s coaches, and for teams to film the game.

3. Without lights we will need to make adjustments to the current schedule. We will need to work with opposing schools and officials to confirm these changes.

– Soccer typically runs a 5pm JV start time and a 7pm Varsity Start time. We would be looking to start JV games at 3pm and Varsity at 5pm to ensure we are done before dark.

– JV Football typically starts at 5pm we may need to bump that start time up as we get later into the season to ensure we are done by dark.

-JH starts at 4:30 pm and should be able to finish by dark without any changes to the schedule.

– Varsity football. The 4 home varsity football games were slated for Friday 7:00 pm kickoffs. This will need to change they will either need to move earlier on Friday such as 4pm or 4:30 pm to finish by dark or move to Saturday. We are exploring the possibility of using temporary light towers to keep some or all game as a true Friday night game.

This project would be done at little to no cost to the district, a group of community leaders have stepped up to cover this project. We thank this group of leaders for making a home field advantage possible for our players.

Jamie Frank