Merced High officially unveils new $6.5M football stadium. ‘It’s been a dream in the making’
The Merced High School football program finally has a stadium to call home.
The school held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday morning to celebrate its new on-campus facility, Cathie Hostetler Stadium.
The Bears have never had a true home stadium, instead playing home games at Merced College and Veterans Stadium at Golden Valley for the past three decades.
Some old-timers remember playing home games at the Merced County Fairgrounds. “There are no better words than to hear the word ‘home,’” said Merced football coach Rob Scheidt, addressing the crowd filling the home side stands during Friday’s ceremony.
“For Merced High School, we have yet to have that feeling on an every day basis, but this is changing today,” Scheidt added.
Scheidt, who has been coaching at Merced High since 1996, has been the driving force behind bringing an on-campus stadium to the school.
“It’s been a dream in the making for over 50 years,” Scheidt said. “I didn’t start the dream but the seed of this idea got passed to me and we were very fortunate to have some community members step in and say, ‘Let’s make this happen.’”
The cost of the stadium was $6.5 million, according to Scott Weimer, Merced Union High School District assistant superintendent. Roughly $1.5 million of the stadium funds came from community donations.
The stadium is named Cathie Hostetler Stadium in honor of the wife of local developer Greg Hostetler, whose donation of 8.3 acres of land in 2014 helped jump-start the project.
Cathie Hostetler died in 2010 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and told her husband she would like to see him give back to the community when possible.
“In the beginning when we talked about this there were times where I thought it potentially would be a great challenge and potentially impossible,” Hostetler said.
“This committee, and the faculty, and the board, Merced High School came together and they gathered donors together and they made this a reality. It makes me feel real good today that it came to be.”
Unique stadium
The stadium seats about 3,400 people. Local community members donated money for the press box, video scoreboard and ticket booth.
“The details our team put together in terms of the siding, the fencing, the scoreboard, the color coordination, it’s really what high school football stadiums should look like,” Scheidt said. “I’ve been to a lot of places where it’s just kind of bland because there’s a lot of people playing there and it doesn’t feel like home to anybody, but this feels like home.”
Merced hosted a scrimmage against Clovis on Friday and will host the first official game at the stadium next week to kickoff the 2022 season against Central Catholic.
One of the unique features of the stadium is that without a running track surrounding the stadium, fans in the bleachers will be right on top of the sidelines.
“We played here with kind of just a make-shift facility and it was really, really loud,” Scheidt said. “I think tonight we’re going to get a sense of how loud it’s going to be with our scrimmage. We’re not talking about people standing up and cheering all the time, but when there’s a big play or there’s a roar within the crowd there’s nothing like it. There were times where we played here with these small bleachers were we couldn’t hear on the sidelines.”
Scheidt says he’d like to see a synthetic turf added to the stadium in the future.
“Every penny counted to make this beautiful stadium what it is, but we’re not finished,” he said. “The vision of this stadium is one that is in constant use. We need a synthetic surface to facilitate all the needs of our students. We want it to be used by as many aspects of our school and community as possible.”
Other new football stadiums
There could be more ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new football stadiums in Merced County in the next few years.
The Merced Union High School District is in the beginning planning phases of adding on-campus football stadiums to both Buhach Colony and El Capitan high schools, according to Ralph Calderon, Merced Union High School District deputy superintendent.
“We started back in June with Buhach Colony.” Calderon said.. We’re going to come back in a couple weeks and get down to business with what we actually want to happen. It’ll be the same thing with El Capitan.”
If everything goes as planned, the two schools could break ground on their new stadiums, which would both would come at an estimated cost of $8 million, in about a year.
The district also has plans to replace the synthetic turfs at Golden Valley’s Veterans Stadium and Atwater’s Dave Honey Stadium and add a synthetic turf to Livingston High’s football stadium.
This story was originally published August 12, 2022 at 4:16 PM.
