Ground Finally Is Broken for Royal Stadium

Efforts to build a football stadium at Royal High School have taken some hits over the years: failed bond measures, concern about unstable soil under the proposed field, debates on the relative merits of grass and artificial turf.

But those efforts, under way since the school opened in 1968, finally produced their first few clods of moved earth Thursday when school district officials gathered to break ground for the stadium.

“Many of us have worked our entire careers getting this to happen,” district Supt. Mary Beth Wolford told the crowd of officials, teachers and students. “This is a wonderful moment, and I’m looking forward to standing in this stadium before too much longer.”

“A good analogy is it’s like a 26-year pregnancy,” said Terry Dobbins, Royal’s athletic director. “It’s a long time, and you think it’s never going to happen, it’s never going to happen. And now we’re here at the birth.”

The stadium will be smaller than school officials once hoped: 4,500 seats in the bleachers instead of 7,000. Astroturf, which would have cost about $1 million to install, is out, replaced by real grass.

However, the $2.8-million stadium will still have a nine-lane, all-weather track, a press box and snack stand, and a field wide enough for soccer games.

The multipurpose facility, Dobbins said, will not just benefit Royal athletes. Community soccer teams will be able to play on its regulation-sized field. Track teams from around Simi Valley will use the track, a significant upgrade from the dirt oval surrounding Royal’s present practice field.

Officials hope to begin construction next week and finish the field in time for next year’s football season.

If so, next fall will mark the first time that the Royal Highlanders will enter games with a real home-field advantage, or even a home field. When the school was built, the district couldn’t afford a stadium, Wolford said.

The drive to build a stadium stalled several times. Two bond measures designed to fund it failed. A soil study found a high water table and thin, sandy soil beneath the field. And the January, 1994, Northridge earthquake forced the district to concentrate on rebuilding other facilities before taking on anything new.

The result--Royal’s games are an eight-mile bus drive away at Moorpark College.

“Moorpark: It’s like it is our home field, but it’s an away game, actually,” said Jason Arredondo, a sophomore on the Highlander football team.

Although he praised the Moorpark facilities, likening the turf to a golf course, Jason looked forward to breaking in the new field. “Maybe we’ll have more fans because they won’t have to drive,” he said. “We’ll get more support.”

Teammate Josh Pell said that having a stadium of their own would inspire the players to win.

“It’s a real honor; it makes you stand a little taller,” he said. “We’re the first to use it. Now we have to fulfill on it.”