By Stephen Hemelt
L’Observateur

VACHERIE — The wait is over for St. James High School football players. It’s time to break in the new stadium.

With a capacity for approximately 2,500 fans on the home side, St. James High will host rival West St. John High at 7 p.m. Thursday, officially kicking off action at the new $8 million facility.

St. James High head football coach Dwain Jenkins said his players are excited to go out in the first game and showcase themselves and their team, while representing the community.

“It’s one of those things they have heard a lot about,” Jenkins said of the new stadium. “They get to be the first team from St. James that gets to play in that stadium. They want to go out and play well for a lot of reasons. More than anything, it’s West St. John and getting to play against your rival.”

Jenkins said there is so much excitement built up for this season because of the stadium and renewed expectations with the football program after making a run to the quarterfinals in 2013.

Those factors and an opening match up against West St. John have created the perfect storm.

“A lot of people are excited about what is about to happen,” Jenkins said.

The fun starts this evening, when the St. James High Quarterback Club gathers at the stadium meeting room. The St. James Parish School Board will host a ribbon cutting at the stadium at 6:45 p.m. Thursday, in anticipation of that night’s 7 p.m. kickoff. Jenkins said the ultimate payoff for the stadium and football players will come in the weeks and months ahead as coaches utilize the new field turf’s features.

“It is a consistent surface that is lined, numbered and marked for football games, 365 days a year,” he said. “The biggest thing is just being able to get on that field and having all those markings to be able to teach your landmarks, teach the game of football, teach your offense, teach your defense, teach your special teams about the way you want them to function on game night.”

Jenkins said it is too expensive for a normal high school to keep a grass field lined and numbered like it’s game night everyday of the week. That is no longer an issue with the field turf.

“The ability to be able to go out there and practice in the future, to run your 7-on-7s over the summer and do those types of things on that field will pay dividends going to the future, because you have that consistent surface to teach on.”

St. James Superintendent Lonnie Luce said the school district recognized the previous St. James High stadium only had a couple of more years of useful life unless major repairs were put into it, setting the stage for the new stadium located along Highways 3127 and 20 in Vacherie.

“We looked at the long range planning of the parish and where population was going to be and decided instead of putting a lot more money into the current location, we moved to a place where we thought the population and the master plan of the parish was moving,” Luce said. “We’re really excited to be out front and doing things up front of where the vision of the parish is and not kind of at the back end of things.”

Luce said when students see the community cares enough to support a first class football stadium, it will inspire them to want more from themselves. Luce said the commitment includes more than 50 acres of land at $1 million in cost, road additions from Highway 3127 and Highway 20 and a $6.5 million stadium.