ORANGE COUNTY PREP WEDNESDAY : FULL HOUSE : So Few Serve So Many: The Scarcity of Stadiums Means Time-Sharing Plans

A long banner draped over a wall on the south end of Glover Stadium at Anaheim High School’s home football game last week against Kennedy read: “Glover Stadium . . . The House Built by Colonists Football in 1957.”

Well, not exactly. This house has more tenants than some apartment buildings. Six schools--Anaheim, Katella, Loara, Magnolia, Savanna and Servite--call Glover Stadium home. Hardly a weekend goes by when there isn’t a game on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights in the facility owned by the city of Anaheim.

Glover isn’t the only one. Mission Viejo Stadium is a full house with El Toro, Trabuco Hills, Laguna Hills and Mission Viejo sharing the facility. Santa Ana Stadium is home for Santa Ana, Santa Ana Valley, Saddleback, Mater Dei and Rancho Santiago College.

Six schools--Edison, Fountain Valley, Corona del Mar, Estancia, Tustin and Costa Mesa--have scheduled home games in Orange Coast College’s LeBard Stadium this season.

All of which adds up to plenty of conflicts as the schools scramble to get as many Friday night home games as possible. Friday games traditionally draw the biggest crowds.

There are currently 21 stadiums in Orange County serving 56 high schools. Simple mathematics dictate that facilities must be shared, meaning schools often play on Thursday or Saturday nights.

“Most coaches don’t want to play on Saturday night because that gives them one less day to prepare for next week,” said Ted Mullen, Anaheim coach. “If you play on Thursday nights, your crowds are generally cut in half because it’s a school night. It’s a problem most of us have learned to live with.”

Only four schools--Capistrano Valley, San Clemente, Dana Hills and Laguna Beach--enjoy the luxury of playing exclusively on their fields. Capistrano Valley, San Clemente and Dana Hills are members of the Capistrano Unified School District, the only district in the county with three stadiums for its three high schools.

“I can’t tell you how much the coaches and principals appreciate having their own stadiums,” said Jerry Thornsley, superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District. “Everyone plays on Friday nights, which has helped establish some tradition and community involvement.”

Two of the district fields--Cougar Stadium at Capistrano Valley and Spencer Stadium on the Dana Hills campus--were built entirely by private funds. A $438,000 gift by the Mission Viejo Co. funded Cougar Stadium in 1977. Proceeds from bingo games helped to build Spencer Stadium in 1980.

Inventive funding helped the two schools obtain restroom and snack bar facilities. Both schools have Pac-Tel relay station towers (for cellular telephones) on campus property. In return, the telephone company built restrooms at Capistrano Valley and a snack bar at Dana Hills.

“It was strictly a trade-out, and once again, was no expense to the taxpayer,” Thornsley said.

David Zirkle, Orange High athletic director, spent three years cutting through red tape in an effort to move the Panthers’ home games to Chapman College, which is across the street from the Orange campus.

Orange currently shares Fred Kelly Stadium with El Modena and Canyon, and Zirkle figured the move would alleviate a scheduling problem and help establish pride in the football program by playing on a field the players could call their own.

“I grew up in Orange, and I remember going to the football games on Friday nights at the college,” Zirkle said. “I thought it was important to come back home . . . to re-establish a tradition.”

Zirkle attended countless meetings, hoping to gain approval to renovate and play five home games in the aging facility. He had to get approval from the Orange Unified District’s school board, the Orange Citizens’ Committee, the Old Town Assn. (homeowners within a three-mile radius of the stadium) and, finally, the college itself, to play at Chapman.

Gaining approval from Chapman College to use its stadium meant playing a political game. Zirkle had to convince the school board to support the college in its effort to gain the city’s approval for a proposed $10 million science building.

Once this was accomplished, Zirkle needed $80,000 to refurbish the stadium, which needed new bench seats with backs, press box improvements, a new scoreboard and new restrooms.

He found that cutting red tape was easier than securing funds.

“We should have been in there (Chapman College) two years ago,” Zirkle said, “but generating the funds has been a problem. I don’t know if we’ll ever play there. When I look back, the political red tape just to get five home games at an existing stadium across the street from our high school was amazing.”

Two years ago, Los Alamitos High School officials grew tired of paying increasing rental fees at Western High’s Handel Stadium and falling behind the Anaheim district schools in the scheduling rotation. They decided to look for an alternate site.

The solution? Los Alamitos moved out of the county, playing its home games in Hanford Rants Stadium located on the Gahr High School campus in Cerritos. Did the stadium crunch push a school out of the county?

“Money was the bottom line,” said Frank Doretti, Los Alamitos athletic director. “The rent at Handel Stadium kept going up and up. It got to the point where we were paying $1,400 just to get in.

“We’re playing our homecoming game (Oct. 16) this year at Handel and paying $1,500. It was the only place available on Friday night, and we thought it was important to have homecoming on Friday night for alums and for scheduling the dance.”

Doretti said Los Alamitos will pay $900 a game to play three home games on Thursday nights at Rants Stadium. The school waves the concession rights, about $1,000, to the boosters at Gahr High.

“We gave up a lot, but we’re happy at Gahr,” he said. “We found that the stadium is actually closer to our school than Handel, and our fans like the facility.”

Officials from the Newport-Mesa Unified School District and Huntington Beach Union High School District meet before the start of each season to schedule games for member schools in Orange Coast’s LeBard Stadium.

The district administrators are given a list of open dates for the facility and then they decide which of their 10 schools’ games would seem appropriate for the 8,000-seat stadium.

The host school pays a $1,000 rental fee for the stadium and another $100 to $250 for security, depending on the projected size of the crowd. If the same school were to play in one of the three stadiums in the two districts, there would be no rental fee. The school would be required only to provide custodians for set-up and cleanup duties.

“If you’re going to schedule a game and pay the rental fee at Orange Coast, you had better be sure you’ve got an attractive game that’s going to draw,” said Bill Boswell, athletic director for the Huntington Beach Union High School District.

Schools in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District can afford to play games at OCC that might not draw that well because of a unique plan.

The district rents classrooms at Costa Mesa High to Orange Coast College for adult education courses on week nights.

“We pay the full rate at LeBard Stadium for our football games, but we also bill the college for our classrooms,” said Ray Schnierer, business manager for the district. “We exchange bills at the end of the year and it evened out last year.”

How far will school administrators go to protect a stadium investment? Officials in the Huntington Beach Union High School district canceled a couple of games in Westminster Stadium four years ago because of heavy rains.

The district had allocated $60,000 to have the stadium turf re-sodded before the start of the season and officials feared that playing on the new sod in a heavy rain would destroy the field.

“We didn’t want a $60,000 investment going down the tubes,” Boswell said. “If you don’t establish a good base with new sod, you’ve got a field full of weeds the next year. If anything happened to that field, we weren’t going to have the money to fix it the next year because our budget had been cut dramatically.”

Servite and Mater Dei pay a high price to play five home football games. Servite scheduled three games on Saturday night in Glover Stadium, paying $800 rent per game. The Friars also play two games in Rants Stadium, paying $900 per game, meaning stadium rental alone is $4,200.

Mater Dei is paying $775 per game and $12 per hour for security fees to rent Santa Ana Stadium for five home games. The tab will be about $4,100. And four of the Monarchs’ five home games are scheduled on Thursday nights.