Saturday, 5 April 2008 11:51 by
Dave It was one of the more touching scenes of 2007: Stone Bridge Coach Mickey Thompson wins a state championship on the same Scott Stadium field he played on from 1974-1977; his kids are star players, and his parents return to Charlottesville for the first time since Thompson’s senior year 30 years earlier to see it.
Good thing it happened this season.
That’s because after only one year, the Group AAA championship football game is being moved off the University of Virginia campus. Ken Tilley, the Virginia High School League’s executive director, was quoted in the Charlottesville Daily Progress as saying costs at UVA ran three times higher than those of previous venues in years past. “We were extremely well-treated,” he said. “The reason we won’t be returning is purely financial.”
The VHSL will now consider places the AAA game has been played in the past, including Norfolk State, the University of Richmond, Darling Stadium in Hampton, and Todd Stadium in Newport News. But the Daily Progress said that for this next football season, Richmond is not available, and Norfolk State has not expressed an interest in hosting another title game.
It should not be a surprise this venue was more expensive. When we were unloading our Comcast equipment for the state championship game, we visited with several security people, and they were all hired from a firm from Richmond. When games are at high school fields like Darling Stadium and Todd Stadium, they defray a lot of these costs with volunteers. Apparently at UVA, you can’t.
But despite the higher costs, this is an incredibly boneheaded decision by the University of Virginia to let this happen. They should just offer to pick up the additional expenses. The Cavaliers have at times struggled to recruit football players from the Old Dominion, and having this game in their home stadium could certainly change this. Group AAA is the biggest classification in Virginia, and the state title games generally have several of the state’s top players involved.
Some would argue that by that point of the season, a top prospect would have already seen any school’s facilities he was interested in. But it’s not the seniors it impacts. It’s the underclassmen, the families, and the younger brothers of players who see Scott Stadium at a young age and say “I’d like to play on this field one day."
As a proud Virginia Tech alumnus, even I had to admit that after Stone Bridge won, I spent a little extra time walking the campus and found it quite impressive. I even found myself thinking that if my daughter one day wanted to go there, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. I then slapped myself in the face, dumped a bucket of ice water on my head, and started intensive therapy. Within a day or two, I returned to normal.
Incidentally, Tilley was quoted in the Daily Progress story as saying “We are looking into sites in the immediate regions of Group AAA schools that would meet the minimum criteria. If those sites are unavailable, we would possibly go to Virginia Tech.”
If that happens, something tells me costs won't be a problem. Frank Beamer will see to that.
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