Not yet, anyway.
Officials from the Crystal City School District have contacted Jefferson, Herculaneum and Festus about playing home games at their stadiums because flooding from the Mississippi River covered the artificial turf field at J.J. Commerford Stadium for more than two months.
Jones said renovation work on the field could begin this week. Several inches of mud cover the field, track and parking area adjacent to the field. The recent spell of dry, hot weather has aided the cleanup effort.
Steven Barnes, the new superintendent for Crystal City, said the damage to the field didn’t meet the threshold for disaster funding.
“There will be no money from (Federal Emergency Management Agency),” Barnes said on Monday. “That changes things for us. We are taking it slow and being careful because we don’t want to do more damage to the field.
“We feel like it’s too wet right now to do anything. The mud will be too heavy to move with water. Our plan this week is to do a test area with a Bobcat and move some of the mud. Then we’ll develop a plan for cleanup. Then we have to decide if we’re going to bid that out.”
The last time the Hornets were unable to play at their stadium for an entire season was in 2015.
Crystal City’s first two games this season were scheduled at home against Chaffee on Aug. 30 and Kelly on Sept. 6. Since the season is starting two weeks later than in recent years, that gives Jones a fighting chance to get the field ready, a task he’s tackled many times before. Of course, until the mud is removed from the artificial turf field, it’s unclear how much damage has been done.
At the Jefferson R-7 Board of Education meeting on July 25, the board discussed lending a helping hand to the Blues Jays’ rival in the I-55 Conference.
At the meeting, board members discussed the Hornets playing one game on their field, two at Festus and one at Herculaneum. Crystal City’s Homecoming game is scheduled against the Blackcats on Oct. 11.
“They are really dealing with some problems with their field. It’s a real mess,” Jefferson R-7 Superintendent Clint Johnston said at the meeting. “We want to be a good neighbor and help out if we can.”
Any money made from the concessions sold at any of the Hornets’ home games at other sites would go to the host school.
Crystal City football head coach Dan Fox said he knew Commerford Stadium was prone to flooding when he took the job in 2018.
Fox has problems on two fronts: where his team is going to play and a numbers crunch. After 25 to 30 players came out for the football team last year, that number has dropped to 17 or 18 from the freshmen through the varsity. How the flooded field will affect those numbers in a couple of weeks is a mystery. The first day of practice is Aug. 12.
“The kids we have are hard-working,” said Fox, whose Hornets finished 1-9 a year ago after an 86-0 district playoff drubbing at the hands of Hayti, the eventual Class 1 state champions. That’s another column for another day.
Fox said the reduced turnout might be the result of his raising the bar in the weight room for potential football players. The first thing he did when hired by the district was start a strength and conditioning class. Any football coach realizes the best way to success on the gridiron begins with pumping lots of iron.
Fox was in no mood to give up.
“The athletes here are very flexible,” he said. “I feel bad for our seniors if they’re not able to play a home game. It’s a great stadium. I love game nights there.”
Jones was unsure about the cost of the cleanup or whether the field could be salvaged in time for this season. The river didn’t leave behind any large debris when it receded, which is a good thing, but the concession stand was flooded and at one point the water was nearly as deep as the crossbar of the goal posts.
“Ken said he’s preparing for the worst,” Fox said. “Am I optimistic we’ll be able to play there this year? No. Do I have hope? Absolutely.”
Fox said talking to people who’ve seen the rise and fall of the river at the stadium said it’s the longest they had seen the water stay there.
“Ken is on top of it. It’s part of the job,” Fox said. “I was told when I was hired that the field floods.”
Jefferson College hires AD
Robert Deutschman will be the new Jefferson College director of athletics.
Deutschman was hired at the Board of Trustees meeting on July 25. A search for a permanent replacement for Greg McVey, who stepped down in June 2018, was conducted by a screening committee that included Tony Cook, Torri Endress, Daryl Gehbauer, Kim Harvey, Marie Self, Karen Wicks and Stacey Wilson.
Deutschman will be paid $84,926 this school year. Softball head coach Tony Cook and Gregg Crain, the school’s athletic trainer, split the AD duties this past year. Deutschman was chosen by a 4-0 vote with two members absent.
Deutschman had been the director of intercollegiate athletics at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. since 2011. He was the head baseball coach there from 2002-2013. During his time as coach, Deutschman’s resume indicates he received state, district and regional Coach of the Year awards.
Deutschman has a bachelor’s degree in secondary education from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale and a master’s degree in athletic administration from Concordia University in Minneapolis.
He has been a pro scout for the Kansas City Royals and Colorado Rockies.