When
I was in high school in the 1960s, the main sports were football in
the fall, basketball in the winter, and track and field in the
spring. In the summer, when school wasn't in session, kids
played softball and "hardball" (baseball).
Not
being an athlete myself, I did my playing with a pencil,
drawing layouts of athletic facilities.
Most
existing high school football fields shared space with other
sports. Usually they were surrounded by oval running tracks,
440 yards to the lap. (Today we'd say 400 meters.)
Sometimes, as in nearby Sunbury, the field also included a baseball diamond.
I
experimented with multi-purpose stadiums, drawing my own versions of
moveable-seat football/baseball facilities like the new Astrodome
while trying other configurations as well. And I usually tried
to make room for track and field.
My
first attempt was a foursquare, very compact stadium: football
field in green, softball and baseball diamonds in brown, surrounded
by ten rows of seats on each of two levels for a capacity of
13,400. The outside dimensions are only 500 by 390 feet.
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CONTINUED BELOW)
The
on-deck circles double as the throwing circles for the discus and
the shot-put. For the runners, there's room for 120 yards of
straightaway before the finish line in front of section 11. But
the turns, with a radius of only 60 feet, are much too tight for an
outdoor track. |