Gorman football banished from Boyd

Spencer Patterson

Thursday, March 25, 1999 | 12:01 p.m.

There's no place like home, unless your home field happens to be located at someone else's high school.

Bishop Gorman's football team will face that very dilemma this fall, when the Gaels will play their home games somewhere other than UNLV's Sam Boyd Stadium for the first time in 27 years.

The private school, which does not have its own football field, recently received word that UNLV did not want high school teams using the field the night before Rebel home games. The university is in the process of replacing its artificial turf surface with natural grass.

"It's difficult, especially the first year, not knowing how our grass is going to react when there's a game the night before," said Pat Christenson, Director of Sam Boyd Stadium.

"We're trying everything to have them play here, but our first responsibility is to the Rebels."

Not surprisingly, the Gaels were disappointed at the eviction from their longtime home.

"It's been kind of a letdown," Gorman coach Roger Whalen said. "Our kids looked at it as a unique part of the Gorman experience."

The Gaels will play their 1999 home games at Valley High, on Friday nights when the Vikings are on the road, and on Saturday nights when the Vikings are at home.

"Valley's been great to us," Gorman athletic director Norman Craft said. "We couldn't have asked for more from them."

Last fall, UNLV informed the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association (NIAA) that Sam Boyd could no longer be used for the state's tradition four-games-in-one-day championship format.

According to Whalen, however, the decision to send the Gaels packing came much later, and that made finding a new field difficult.

"I wish they would have let us know early enough to have a facility by the fall," Whalen said. "That's what upsets me the most."

Craft said the university offered Gorman one home date at Sam Boyd this fall, but he opted to keep all of the team's home games in one place.

"I can understand (first-year UNLV football coach John) Robinson's concern," Craft said. "If we get a storm in here on a Friday night, we could tear up the field.

"It was a great venue, a place we called home," Craft continued. "But for a high school ballgame, you get 2,000 people in that place and it rang with emptiness."

Now, Gorman will concentrate its efforts on building a new multi-sport facility that can house the school's football, baseball, soccer and softball programs, among others.

"Hopefully, we're going to get a long-needed facility out of this," Whalen said.

And until that day, the Gaels will try to make the most out of a strange situation.

"We're going to turn it into an us-against-the-world kind of thing," Whalen said. "I think our players are disappointed, but at the same time they're really focused."