New stadium: A fan’s guide

Mitchell Activities Director Geoff Gross can’t remember the last time the locker rooms inside Joe Quintal Field’s 69-year old stadium were used.

The plumbing was inadequate, the lockers were rusty, and concrete pieces of the wall were crumbling to the ground. Instead of using the facility, players dressed at the high school’s locker rooms and strolled across the street to compete.

That will end next fall.

The new and improved Joe Quintal Field stadium, which district officials hope will be ready by the fall’s first home game, is envisioned as a place where a player can dress and a fan can enjoy not just the game, but the venue itself.

“When we started talks about this, we were trying to create a structure that is a really high-quality structure and would be able to be there 75 to 80 years from now,” Superintendent Joe Graves said. “One of the advantages of the new one versus the old one is that when we house an event there — whether it be soccer, football or track — is it’s a stand-alone facility now.”

On March 22, the Mitchell Board of Education finalized the approval to construct a $2.9 million stadium, which will have an increased capacity of 1,746 people. The deadline for completion is Sept. 2, one day prior to the Kernels’ first home football game.

Until then, contractors will be working to build a design by Herm Harms, an architect at Puetz Corporation in Mitchell.

“We’re building a stadium that will last 75 years,” project construction manager Mark Puetz said. “We wanted to build something that the community could be excited about.

“The Mitchell stadium had been ranked as one of the worst in the state. I hope we now have a reputation with the new stadium as one of the nicest in the state.”

The facility

The stadium will be made of a reddish-brown precast concrete and will have columns with a lighter cream color. It will be 260 feet long, which is about 100 feet longer than the old stadium. Including the press box that will sit atop the seating section, the stadium will stand 36 feet tall.

Eight large windows and four doors will make up its main entrance on the north side. A 20-foot-wide tunnel directly in line with the main entrance will lead to the bleachers.

“As you come in from the underside of the stadium, there’s steps that go up, and then there’s also the handicap-accessible ramps that anyone could take,” Puetz said.

In the underbelly of the stadium will be a display of memorabilia from the old Joe Quintal stadium, with records from past Kernels’ teams and commemorative, engraved victory bricks purchased by any fans, athletes and coaches.

The men’s and women’s bathrooms will sandwich the concessions area, which will be located just south of the main entrance.

Unlike the former Joe Quintal stadium, the new facility will have plenty of restroom space. There will be two women’s restrooms with a total of 22 fixtures, and one men’s room with 16 total fixtures, plus a unisex bathroom.

On the very east and west sides of the new stadium will be officials’ and coaches’ locker rooms. Those spaces will also serve as meeting places during track and field events, where times will be recorded and photo finishes will be viewed.

Locker rooms

The new locker rooms will be college-style.

Gross sat in on all of the early design meetings and said he thought it would be beneficial to have a large, spacious area for players to prepare for games.

“One of the things that will really add to it is having the facilities over there to be able to shower and dress and have equipment storage and checkout,” Gross said. “All of that will be able to get done through the locker rooms.”

The lockers will be different than the regular gym-style lockers and will have a seat built into them.

This eliminates any space that is normally used for benches and helps create a better place for team meetings, according to Gross.

“I think some of the designs that will enhance it that will make it one of the best stadiums in the state are the locker rooms,” Puetz said. “These will be very impressive areas that I think both visitors and home teams will get excited about using.”

Both locker rooms will be fit with toilet fixtures and showers.

Seating and concessions

Fifteen rows of aluminum bleachers will sit on the precast concrete that will make up Joe Quintal stadium. The bleachers will seat 1,746 people, which is an expansion of the old capacity of about 1,200.

In the initial plans, the visitor’s side was planned to be upgraded as well. But due to cost-cutting measures, it was eliminated.

Graves said upgrading the visitor’s side in the future isn’t out of the question.

“We haven’t given up that that idea, and we’re still very much committed to making that work someday,” he said.

Currently, Joe Quintal Field can seat 180 people in the visitor’s bleachers.

The concessions stand will be in the same spot it was in the old stadium, but will be enlarged.

Upon entering at the main gate, the concession will be off to the left in the underbelly of the stadium.

“It’s about double the size of what there currently is,” Puetz said. “There will be a lot more and wider windows.

“It will be extremely accessible for the people coming back down from the top of the stadium and very accessible for the people coming into the stadium.”

Fencing and turnstile

Chain-link fence topped by barbed-wire surrounds Joe Quintal Field in its current form.

The unfriendly look will be taken down, and new chain-link fencing will line its perimeter.

Just east of the stadium, a turnstile will be added for non-operational hours.

“When we put the track in, people said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be able to get into the track so that we could use it as private individuals whenever we wanted to?’ ” Graves said. “It’s a great idea, but the problem was that if we just put a gate in, people could come in with bicycles or mopeds, and that track surface can’t have that on it.

“We said we wanted to try to do that, so what we said we’d do is put a pretty significant turnstile on there. It is big, galvanized steel with a cap on it. It’s so you can get into it, but you can’t be carrying something. It’s going to be much more available to the community.”

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