The University of Charleston Stadium at Laidley Field, is an 18,500-capacity stadium located in downtown Charleston, West Virginia, near the state Capitol complex. It features a FieldTurf playing field for football and facilities for track and field competitions.
The stadium was finished in 1979, as a complete rebuild of a previous facility. It is owned by Kanawha County Schools. In 2003, because the school board lacked funds to maintain the stadium, it entered into a joint venture with the private University of Charleston. UC invested over $1.5 million to replace the turf, add locker rooms and a skybox, and make other improvements in exchange for access and naming rights.
The stadium is home to the University of Charleston Golden Eagles. Capital High School football and multiple middle school and community teams also play at UC Stadium. It hosts the state high school track and field championships. The field has also played host to multiple high school playoff games as well as being host to the State Championships before their move to Wheeling in the 90's. It also hosts the Daily Mail Kanawha County Majorette and Band Festival at the end of September of each year.
Record attendance for this stadium was set at a local high school contest, Charleston High School vs. Stonewall High School in the latter part of the 1980s, later to be called "The Game" of the century. Record attendance was set at over 21,000. Later, when Capital High and Riverside High met when both were undefeated and ranked 1 and 2 in the state, there again were over 20,000 in attendance.
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Coordinates: 38°20′39″N 81°36′55″W / 38.344048°N 81.615158°W / 38.344048; -81.615158
Famous quotes containing the words university of, university, stadium and/or field:
“Cold an old predicament of the breath:
Adroit, the shapely prefaces complete,
Accept the university of death.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University education. These things are all outside a man, and if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labour. You must in some way or other graft upon the man’s nature a new nature, which has in it the element of the Divine.”
—William Booth (1829–1912)
“In their eyes I have seen
the pin men of madness in marathon trim
race round the track of the stadium pupil.”
—Patricia K. Page (b. 1916)
“... there are no chains so galling as the chains of ignorance—no fetters so binding as those that bind the soul, and exclude it from the vast field of useful and scientific knowledge. O, had I received the advantages of early education, my ideas would, ere now, have expanded far and wide; but, alas! I possess nothing but moral capability—no teachings but the teachings of the Holy Spirit.”
—Maria Stewart (1803–1879)