April/May 2019 - 25

Photos courtesy of
Richland County School District
By Keith Loria, contributing writer
It was 2014 when the board of directors at Richland
County School District One began discussing a plan to
revitalize the stadiums after recognizing the facilities were
in decline.
" We started by looking at our existing stadiums and
knew we also needed an additional stadium, " said Raymond
Perkins, Richland One school district's director of facility
services. The district serves more than 23,000 students
from areas around Columbia, South Carolina. " Rather than
build just the new one, we wanted to renovate the others up
to the standards of what we would be doing for the one we
wanted to build. "
During the planning phase, athletic directors, principals,
parents and boosters were all given opportunities to look at
designs and offer opinions. Conceptual designs were then
brought to a committee comprising school and community
representatives.
" They sent architects to each high school in the district
to go over needs, wants and wishes in the program, and
then the architect took back findings to the school board, "
said Robert Matz, RCSD1's athletic director, who was hired
in 2015 after the initial plan was developed. " During the
process, I helped managed the design and construction. I
also helped with managing the timeline and scheduling,
(and) making sure there were no items in the construction
that were left out or designed inefficiently. "
The plan involved having all four of the district's
stadiums - Memorial, WJ Keenan, Lower Richland and the
scheduled Charles Bolden - possessing the same features
to create uniformity among them.
" We didn't want to underserve any area of the district,
which is why it was important for us to identify the
standards ahead of time, " Perkins said. " We inspected each
site and made detailed notes of what needed to be done. "
As facilities manager, Perkins spent time looking at
other stadium projects and listening to coaches and
athletic directors about their needs. He then put together a
document with all of the ideas, coming up with a final plan.
Once fully completed, all will offer a 5,000-seat capacity,
new lighting, video scoreboards, updated restrooms, press
boxes, updated locker rooms and fencing, and remodeled
field houses.
" The stadium projects were all part of this $40 million
upgrade, " Matz said. " Each stadium also received state-ofthe-art
artificial turf with natural fill (coconut fiber, sand
and zeolite). Parking lots were also upgraded and ticket and
plaza areas were added to the facilities. "
At each stadium, a brick façade goes across the front of
the home and visiting locker rooms. All have individual
lockers for each player and include Wi-Fi. The project was
funded wholly by the district, having been set aside from a
2004 bond.
Currently, Memorial, Lower Richland and WJ Keenan are
near completion, and construction of Charles Bolden will
get underway this year.
" Our communities have been very impressed with what
we have provided so far, " Matz said.
COACHAD.COM 25
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April/May 2019

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