Wildcats prepare for final year at Bates Memorial Stadium

By now, you probably know that Judi Lee, one of the best sandlot football players the Enterprise High School class of 1966 produced, together with Pam McQueen, who married one of the best football players on the EHS Wildcat 1978 team, are compiling a cookbook filled with memorial recipes and recollections of Enterprise High School and Wildcat athletics, a topic that historically begins with football, a sport the Wildcats began playing in 1913.
To assist in that Herculean effort, a regular feature in The Enterprise Ledger throughout the 2009 season will be a column of your recollections of Wildcat football games played in R.L. Bates Memorial Stadium.
Send your memories to: {encode="radams@eocc.edu" title="radams@eocc.edu"}.
Barring some unforeseen occurrence, 2009 will be the 54th and final season the Wildcats play their home games in Bates Memorial.
“The new stadium will be on the campus of the new Enterprise High School,” said Dr. Jim Reese, Enterprise superintendent of education and lifelong Wildcat fan. “I have strong emotional ties to Bates Memorial and, in my heart, I’d like to see it rebuilt.”
Bates Memorial, Enterprise High School and Hillcrest Elementary School were destroyed by the March 1, 2007, tornado that claimed the lives of eight EHS students.
The new Enterprise High School stadium will be located on property near the intersection of North Main Street and Boll Weevil Circle.
“It was going to cost approximately $3.5 million to repair Bates Memorial and get it up to current code and standards now required,” Reese said of the arena first used for the 1956 season. “The new stadium is going to cost approximately $4.5 million.
“The new stadium will seat 8,000 fans, with 5,000 seats on the home side. The field house will open right into the stadium and there’ll be ample parking.”
The stadium will also have excellent lighting and sound systems, and first-class pressbox, restrooms and concession stands.
“I’ve seen at least one game in Bates Memorial every year except in 1969 when I was in military basic training at Fort Polk, La.,” Reese said.
“And I got home that season in time to see an Enterprise game in Montgomery. I also saw games in the EHS gym every year, and I miss it, too.
“But I believe once the new stadium is completed and we start playing games there, it will quickly develop its own identity and traditions.”
The new stadium will be the Wildcats’ fifth home since 1913.
“I believe 53 seasons from 2010, fans will reflect on the same kinds of fond memories we hold for Bates Memorial,” Reese said. “I have strong feelings about Wrigley Field in Chicago and Fenway Park in Boston, too, but my feelings for Bates Memorial are even stronger.
“If we’d been able to build the new school where the high school had been since 1956, it would have been a no-brainer to rebuild the stadium.
“But with the new school being built, having the stadium on the campus will save on busing students from the school to the stadium and will provide ease of use for activities beyond football.”
Currently, on home game Friday evenings, the Wildcats are taken by bus to Hillcrest Baptist Church from their temporary quarters elsewhere in the school system.
Visiting teams dress at nearby recreation department facilities and use a large tent at the field-level entrance for final pre-game activities and at halftime.
Wildcat gridirons before Bates Memorial carried the name “Peanut Stadium.” What will be the name of the new stadium?
“Feelings are something simple like ’Wildcat Stadium’ will be its name,” Reese said. “Our school system is not in the habit of naming facilities after anyone; Bates Memorial was originally called Enterprise Municipal Stadium, a name it carried for one season before being renamed for the long-time school principal who also headed the Alabama High School Athletic Association in the early 1950s.
So what will become of Bates Memorial after this season? “It will still be used for junior high and possibly high school J-V games,” Reese said, “and city recreation league playoff games have been held there for several years; we’re in hopes all that, plus non-athletic community events, will continue to be held there.”