Calvert Field will not host home games for East Bank Middle School football this fall

Calvert Field, which is over twenty years old and where East Bank Middle School football teams play, will not be in use for football this year after an engineer said that the home stands are unsafe.

As per the decision made by Kanawha County School Superintendent Tom Williams during the Wednesday’s meeting, for the present season, three home games of the school will be shifted to Riverside High School.

At least a few dozens of LB 172, East Bank supporters expressed this during the Kanawha County Board of Education meeting on Wednesday.

Administrators, or school representatives once consulted a structural engineer in the month of May regarding the structural stability of press box and bleachers of the Calvert Field about which Williams quoted, the report was not encouraging.

“They told me it would cost less to bulldoze everything and start all over again than to address the problems they have there,” Williams said.

Williams stated that since May, the county’s facilities and maintenance department contacted individuals interested in bringing the metal bleachers and a press box area to meet the 2024 term. Williams testified that the effort to find anything that was available for press options was only a scaffolding which was declared as hazardous.

In the meeting that took place this morning, I stated, ‘It’s time for football to begin shortly. ’ So, the decision must be made now concerning the games that the children should prepare for the three home games they have,” Williams stated.

Last week during the BOE meeting the football coach of East Bank Middle School, David Peters, told the board of directors that the community simply needs facilities to be repaired.

“Just fix our stuff like you’re fixing yours,” Peters responds to the school board angered by their effrontery. “Just do repair and our things… thats all that we ask… We want to have our fun time and hopefully, we can revert back this decision gradually this year… Rudy, not next year…

East Bank High School graduate Teresa Howell said that next generation of the East Bank student athletes will experience the impacts of those decisions.

“Look in the back of the room,” Hammer’s man Howell suggested. “Those decisions you are making are going to affect those kids in the back of the room Here I am to Speak in opposition to those kids having to go to Riverside High School to play their football games this year, it is blasphemy”.

As for the practices in the current season, depending on Calvert Field is possible, however, Williams states that the stadium’s understands locker room is also declared unsafe by facility specialists, thus, students will have to return to the building of their school to change and use the restroom or facilities may be rented.

Regarding the further steps in the situation, the school members told Williams that they needed reports from time to time.

TBU Prior to hosting football games for East Bank High School before the school shut down in 1999, Calvert Field was home, at different times, to state championship teams in 1964 (AAA), 1971-73 (AAA), 1989-1990 (AA) 1993(AA) 1996 (AA).