FOOTBALL: Wheatley Heights to pick up slack this fall while Rock Pile takes a rest

HERE’S THE LINK FOR THIS STORY ON THE SOUTHSIDE REPORTER WEBSITE:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/community/southside/news/article/Wheatley-to-handle-Alamo-Stadium-s-games-4744209.php

For the potential benefit of the Wheatley Heights Sports Complex, the timing couldn’t have been better.

Alamo Stadium is taking a much needed sabbatical from competition this fall. The San Antonio Independent School District needed a facility to share the load of middle school and high school football games with the SAISD Complex.

Fortunately for both parties, the Wheatley Heights complex has been up and running since February 2012.

“I think it’s a really positive deal. It’s something that helps both of us,” said Wheatley Heights executive director Frank Dunn, a Highlands High School alum.

“For us, it’s like a huge advantage. We’re going to have a lot of people coming in here who’ve never really known where this place was.”

Until the Alamo Stadium renovations are complete and football returns to its artificial turf next fall, Wheatley Heights should fill the bill of what the school district was looking for. Although it lacks Alamo Stadium’s 23,000 seating capacity, the like-new pinch-hitter brings a lot to the plate.

“We needed to find another place to play football games,” SAISD athletic director Gil Garza said. “The reasons we liked Wheatley Heights is because it was inside the district and very similar in bleacher space to the sports complex. It has a very good turf field. So we came to an agreement on using it.

“It’s a really nice facility. I think it’s going to work out really well for us, and it’s good for the east side.”

Thirteen varsity football games will be played at the Wheatley Heights Sports Complex. At least one will take place in each week of the season, with one exception. During the week of Sept. 26-28, when many area teams have a bye week, Wheatley Heights won’t play host to any varsity games.

However, a hefty schedule of middle school and underclass high school games will be played on its Paragon turf surface throughout the season.

“I’m going to miss Alamo Stadium. I’ve been in the district for quite some time – 30 years,” Brackenridge coach Willie Hall said, “It’s been a showcase in the city since it was first built. It’s still the largest stadium in San Antonio.

“But (Wheatley Heights) is a beautiful facility. I think there’ll be great deal of enthusiasm about it. I think it’ll be a little short on seating but, outside of that, I think it’ll be a nice venue. It’ll be a change and I think it’ll give us something to look forward to.”

Area varsity teams that will play at Wheatley Heights this year are: Brackenridge, Burbank, Edison, Highlands, Jefferson, Kennedy, Lanier and Sam Houston.

“It’ll be a great place to play,” Highlands coach Bert Lopez said. “It’s a different venue and it’s close to home. We’ve never had a varsity game there, but we’ve had several track meets. It’ll be interesting to see how it works out.”

Dunn isn’t certain whether the first move to establish a football partnership between the SAISD and the facility was made by Wheatley Heights’ representatives or the district’s.

“They were in need,” he said, “and since I do a lot of work with the school district, we just started talking one day. It kind of worked out. They needed a facility, and we had one.”

The facility was funded through a venue tax as part of Bexar County’s Community Venues Program in conjunction with the City of San Antonio. The $7.5 million grant enabled Wheatley Heights to offer a nine-lane, all-weather track, four soccer fields suitable for AAU and UIL usage and other amenities.

It’s located on the east side, close to I-10. It’s adjacent to the expressway’s intersection with south W.W. White Rd.

Youth football has dominated the landscape at the facility so far. Although, as Lopez indicated, Wheatley Heights got its SAISD christening when several track meets took place there last spring, including the District 28-4A meet. Middle school track meets also were shifted from Alamo Stadium to the new track.

“We hosted fall events last year, but they were mostly Pop Warner football and track,” Dunn said. “Now, going into high school, it opens us up to a whole different audience.”

The first varsity game at the venue will be Brackenridge versus Sam Houston in Week 0. The Aug. 29 neighborhood rivalry game figures to be a great shakedown cruise for how well-prepared Wheatley Heights’ staff is for its new challenge.

“Playing Sam Houston, it’s two inner-city schools in kind of a neighborhood brawl,” Hall said. “A lot of kids from both schools are very friendly with each other. It’s a great opportunity for both schools to get off to a good start on their season.

“The Hurricanes always have great athletes. We never look past them.”

The crowd should be sizeable as a companion to the electric atmosphere.

“It’s going to help that the crowd is going to be closer to the field,” Hall said. “It’s going to be different than playing in front of 20-plus-thousand. It could bolster the fan base we do have. It may seem like there are tons of people in there, even if it’s no more than we usually have.”

The rivals will be two of the most frequent visitors. It’s the first of five games the Eagles will play at Wheatley Heights. Sam Houston has four games scheduled at the venue.

“We wanted to be as equal as we could with who played there and who played at the sports complex,” Garza explained. “But some of the schools that bring bigger crowds couldn’t play at Wheatley Heights. We wanted to give our kids an equal opportunity to play at both places, as much as we could.”

Although it’s one of the closest schools to Wheatley Heights, Highlands will make its only appearance on Sept. 7, in a non-district game against Uvalde. That is due, in part, to its ability to fill the stands.

“Unfortunately, we only have one game there this year,” Lopez said. “Most of our games are at the sports complex. When this was first proposed, it was said that ourselves and Jefferson would never be “visitors” at Wheatley Heights because of our crowds.”

Although Alamo Stadium lends a big-time ambiance to any game played there, it had one detriment the Highlands coach won’t miss. In fact, it’s an aforementioned strength at Wheatley Heights.

“It’s one of the (varieties) of field turf, so it’s a really good turf,” Lopez said. “It’s going to be a big improvement on the old carpet at Alamo Stadium.”

The venerable old stadium, nicknamed The Rock Pile, was built as part of a Works Progress Association project in 1940. Make no mistake, its absence will be felt by players, fans and coaches.

“I guess the kids are used to playing at Alamo Stadium, but they don’t know any different,” Lopez said. “It’ll be nice for them to play in their community.”

To prepare Wheatley Heights for much larger crowds and demands on its facilities, some changes have been made. Temporary seating has been imported along with portable locker rooms in the form of double-wide trailers.

“The artificial surface is very, very good,” Garza said. “That’s probably one of the biggest pluses. They’ve also got a very good track. It’s one of the best around.

“The bleacher space and seating is adequate for our needs. Our biggest concern was that they didn’t have locker rooms, but we’ve brought in these double-wides, so teams will have some place to meet at halftime and dress after games.

“There are no showers, but then a lot of schools didn’t shower at Alamo Stadium anyway. For the teams that do need to shower, we can make arrangements to take them to a high school.”

Dunn has heard the concerns about being able to accommodate the crowds that area games will attract, and has addressed them. He said he’d recently gotten approval to bring in portable bleachers on both sides of the field. He said they will raise the seating capacity to nearly 7,000.

“I did a study on San Antonio school district games the last two years,” Dunn said. “I think the average attendance was about 2,400, with the exception of one game.

“I guarantee you this: More people will come to games at Wheatley than ever went to Alamo Stadium. We’re more community-based. When schools like Sam Houston, Highlands and Brack play, we’re going to be busting at the seams. I think it will get a bigger number of fans.”

One reason Dunn said he believes that crowds will flock to the stadium is because it’s close to east-side homes. Another is the concessions.

“We have Bob’s Smoke House and a guy who does chicken wings,” he said. “That’s one thing people who’ve been here for track ask about, will we have those same concessions (for football). It’s going to help bring those people back. The athletes went wild for barbecue sandwiches and the chicken nuggets The Wing Man sells. It’s all fresh.”

Dunn said one of the founding principles when the complex opened was that it would continue to expand to meet the community’s needs.

“We want to add a community center that will double as a weight room with shower facilities,” Dunn said. “We want to get that on the radar for the city council and the county. People will be in there all day long.”

With a first-class field and 700 parking spaces, including a separate section for buses, Dunn is hoping schools will book Wheatley Heights for playoff games at season’s end.

Garza said some SAISD boys and girls soccer games will be played there in the spring. Of course, the track meets will continue.

The track already is well-known among area track and field fans. In addition to the SAISD meets, it’s home to Dunn’s San Antonio Heat track club.

Next fall, football will return to renovated Alamo Stadium. Asked what he liked about the revisions that are being done to the stadium, Garza’s answer was “everything.”

The new Alamo Stadium will have a smaller seating capacity of 16,000 to 18,000, but a wider playing field that will especially benefit soccer. The estimated completion date currently is late spring or early summer of 2014.

“As it was, it was a great old stadium,” he said. “It just has so much history. But it was built in 1940, so what it needed was a facelift. Other than the scoreboard, goalposts and track, nothing had really been done to the infrastructure. It had antiquated locker rooms, concession stands and restrooms.

“It needed a facelift, and it’s finally getting it, but we kept the structural integrity. Everything will be new, but it’ll still have the same look about it.”

Even so, this might be the beginning of a long-lasting relationship, depending on the arrangement works for both parties. The SAISD athletic director stated that it was possible for district teams to continue playing at Wheatley Heights in future seasons.

“I’d like to keep our options open,” Garza said. “One thing I like is the enthusiasm Highlands and Sam Houston are going to generate when they play there. We don’t want to lose Alamo Stadium. But there’s probably a very good chance Highlands and Sam Houston will play there in the future.

“We’ll have to see how many games we want to play there.”

The executive director thinks Wheatley Heights made its mark on the athletes who ran there in the spring.

“When they came over and saw our field,” Dunn said, “they loved it. They wanted to stay on the field. We had to run them off of it.”

Dunn recalled a conversation he overhead this spring during a middle school track meet.

“We had some people who came over from Judson (High School),” Dunn said. “Some guy told his family, “This facility is awesome. I didn’t even know this was here.’ ”

Because of that conversation and the general reception Wheatley Heights has received in its relatively short life, Dunn is confident others soon will have similar thoughts about it – and they’ll be reflected in the bottom line over time.

“Eventually,” he said, “we’ll get business out of it.”

GAMES AT WHEATLEY HEIGHTS

Friday, Aug. 30

Brackenridge (0-0) vs. Sam Houston (0-0), 7:30 p.m.

Friday, Sept. 6

Floresville (0-0) vs. Brackenridge (0-0), 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, Sept. 7

Uvalde (0-0) vs. Highlands (0-0), 7 p.m.

Friday, Sept. 13

Kennedy (0-0) vs. Jefferson (0-0), 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, Sept. 14

Devine (0-0) vs. Sam Houston (0-0), 7 p.m.