Jake Beck

Highclimber Stadium
As youre leaving the locker room, in a separate building behind our stadium, you enter
the left side of the stadium and start to see our natural, green grass. As youre getting closer, the
smell of the recently cut grass starts entering your nose. It is one of the last grass stadiums left in
Western Washington. As youre walking across our track surrounding our field, our brand new
scoreboard starts entering your vision. As you step on to the field, your cleats start to sink into
the rain soaked grass just a little from the constant drizzle throughout the day. As youre getting
to the sideline, you start entering the long, dark shadow from the stands. Turning around, you
will see our black and red stands stretching out behind the track, partially covering the horizon.
Behind you, hundreds of crazy fans will be cramming the stadium, eagerly supporting their team.
The teams await on each sideline, surveying the field before battle. By late october, in between
the two 40 yard lines, about 20 yards of mud fills the field from all the the games played in the
wet Western Washington fall. Many people hate it, but I call it a home field advantage. I was the
quarterback at Shelton High School my junior and senior year, so I experienced this many times.

The football team uses Highclimber stadium many times in the course of the year. You
might think the only time we use the field on friday nights, but that is not the case at all. As early
as the end of may, you can find the team doing spring walkthroughs out on the field. However,
you wont see any players in pads out on the field. The players will simply be in shorts and tshirts going through walkthroughs, getting back into shape, and starting to gain a better grasp on
our play book.
Entering the summer, you will see the team out on the field constantly. Depending on
when their first camp is, you will see them starting to use pads. This early in the season you
wont see a great amount of contact between players. Many of the players are still getting used to
running, catching, and throwing with all that gear on their body. Many people dont realize how
different it is moving around with a bunch of padding all over your body.
Once the season starts, our football team uses the stadium on a regular basis. Mondays
are a rest day for the field. The team might go out and run some gassers for a little while, but a
vast majority of the day is spent in Coach Hinkles classroom watching film on the upcoming
opponent and talking about the game plan for that week.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays are intense, full padded, practices. Everyone except the
quarterback is fair game to tackle, he will get beat up enough during the upcoming game. These
are the days that the team puts their game plan into effect and critiques it, and some conditioning
throughout practice. These are the two most intense days of the week, except for fridays.
Thursdays are for walk throughs. Making sure everyone has all the new additions to the
playbook down and is ready to play to their best abilities the next day. The players only have
their helmets on thursdays and there is no contact. It is more of a laid back practice as long as

everything is going smooth. If things arent so smooth, the coaches wont be very happy, it can
turn into a very long practice.
Fridays are the real reason why the stadium exists. During the day you find the
maintenance crew mowing the field, painting, repainting the lines on the field, and checking over
the stands for garbage laying around. The team arrives to the stadium around 5 o'clock. The
quarterbacks and kickers take the field around 5:45 to warm up their arms and legs. The rest of
the team joins them around 6 and they begin to warm up. After warm ups the team runs through
some offensive and defensive plays before the game starts. Kickoff is at 7, and the game is
underway. This is when the team puts everything they have been preparing into effect. At
halftime the team will make a few adjustments to their offense and defense, depending upon
what the coaches up in the booth and players on the field are seeing. Once the battle is over, there
are either two moods running through the stadium, excitement or disappointment. Half an hour
after the game, the only thing you will find is those few unsung maintenance crew members
cleaning the stadium again.
Highclimber Stadium provides a wonderful environment for the youth of Sheltons
community to have a fun and exciting time. Nothing could replace rainy, fall nights in the small
town of Shelton, Washington. Without the stadium, nothing about my hometown of Shelton or
the life I have come to know through my experiences there would be the same. There is no better
place I would rather spend my summer and fall. The time I spent working hard on this field has
changed me into the person I am today, teaching me hard work and dedication. It will also
continue to change the lives of others by teaching them the same lessons I learned. Its main
purpose, football, will always be the greatest thing about Highclimber Stadium.