KSHB 41 reporter Claire Bradshaw covers eastern Jackson County, including Blue Springs and Independence. Share your story idea with Claire.
What would you do with $2 million? Crest Ridge Schools has its answers: a new football field.
The small county school district is competing in a national campaign through T-Mobile to win the prize money. If it wins the Friday Night 5G Lights contest, the school will receive $2 million to update its sports facilities.
The field at Crest Ridge Schools has an obvious problem: a 36-inch long hump.
“So I'm not a very tall person, but if you stand on one side and I'm on the other side, you can barely see half my body. Not only that, there's some craters in it without the football field. We've seen some pretty gnarly injuries on it, just because it's not really safe field conditions,” said assistant football coach Dylan Skeens.
The field was built by local farmers in 1982. Besides slight work done in an attempt to fix the hump, there have not been any major renovations.
Players like senior James Shelton and Adian Basham said they face struggles during practice and home games.
“It's just having to block downhill. It's hard to keep your feet steady. There's a lot of holes,” said senior James Shelton.
“Not gonna lie, playing on other fields, you know, it's way better. But whenever you play on this one, it's kind of hard to catch the ball whenever the quarterbacks up on the top of the peak down here trying to catch it, because he's throwing it a whole lot lower than what he thinks he's throwing it,” said Basham.
Coach Skeens said if the school wins, it will put in a flat, turf field, update the weight room and add more seating. Basham said the weights they like to use are broken. Plus, the school claims they get upwards of 600 people on a Friday night when they can only seat around 400.
“We really do need more capacity, because it doesn't hold all the people we need. We always got people sitting in chairs laid all across the field, and they're all over there on the track,” said Basham.
It isn’t just the high school that uses the field, according to Coach Skeens. It is used six nights a week from youth football teams up to high school. So new facilities would benefit the community as a whole.
“I do have a lot of confidence. This whole competition really has brought our community together. Big time," said Skeens.
To help Crest Ridge, people need to like this Instagram video. If it is shared to a story or another person, they get even more votes. Currently, the school is in 4th place.
T-Mobile’s Friday Night 5G Lights competition ends November 12.