Elkhorn North’s stadium has many uses for sports from lower level football to varsity soccer. However, one event that is left out of being able to use the stadium is varsity football.
Elkhorn North’s varsity football team is required to play their home games at Elkhorn High School’s stadium, sharing the stadium alongside Elkhorn South and Elkhorn High. Not being able to play their games at their own stadium may seem like a disadvantage, but there is a good and simple reason for this: There isn’t enough room.
“If you were to take our seating and drop it into Elkhorn High, it would be maybe 25% of their stadium there,” Athletic Director Luke Ford said.
An example of the lack of space is the Gatorade Scrimmage held at the beginning of the year. The game was an intersquad scrimmage, not one team against another. The stands were filled to the brim with students and families of players. This event was just for the school, and there were no away team families or away team student section, and the stands were still filled to the max.
Although there was a full house in the stands, the players thought it was an amazing experience to have the game held at North’s stadium.
“Looking into the stands and seeing it so packed was amazing,” Senior and wide receiver Hunter Richardson said. “The atmosphere of having it on our own field was just something all us players looked forward to and made the night even more memorable.”
Many players hope to be able to play the scrimmage there for the next few years.
It’s very costly to put additional stands at the high schools, which is why both North and South don’t have enough to host high school games. To accommodate this, Elkhorn High’s stadium went under renovation in 2018 to add more stands for all three schools to share this stadium, so lots of money from the district went into that.
When the scrimmage is not accounted for, current football players won’t get to play on this field any other time. Perhaps students in the future may be able to have the opportunity to do so as there is lots of room to the east side of the stadium or by the neighborhood to potentially add more stands.
The town of Elkhorn is a growing community, and the Elkhorn district also has lots of room to grow. In order for North’s stadium to be added onto, another high school would need to be built.
“Having four high schools share one stadium from varsity football would be very difficult schedule-wise so in that situation, there may be an idea where we add onto North to have two stadiums between the four schools,” Ford said.
