Lawrence high will play its final regular-season game in Haskell Stadium, pictured, at 7:30 tonight against crosstown rival Free State. It has been the home stadium of the Lions for the past 78 years.

So this is it.

Lawrence High’s final regular-season football game at Haskell Stadium. The Lions’ last adventure at the field they’ve called home for 78 years before they move into their own on-campus, 4,000-seat stadium in 2009.

It’s only fitting that the contest has playoff implications. After all, the concrete cathedral on the east edge of town has held so many playoff games and epic battles.

Unlike Yankee Stadium, which was honored with tributes and ceremonies throughout the 2008 major-league baseball season, Haskell Stadium is not disappearing. It’s not closing for good.

But it is losing part of its soul.

“The memories are so many and so great,” said LHS coach Dirk Wedd, who played for the Lions in the late 1960s and has been on the coaching staff since 1990. “Our first state championship at LHS in 1979, we beat Wichita Southeast, 7-0, and the fact that it was played at Haskell is kind of neat. That’s just one of many great memories I have there.”

Before the 1979 game, the state championships the Lions won were “mythical,” voted on and handed out instead of settled on the field.

When the Lions (3-4) tangle with Free State High (4-3) at 7:30 tonight, both teams will look to improve to 2-0 in district play. LHS moved to 1-0 last week with a 28-7 victory against Olathe Northwest. Free State won its district opener, 55-21, at Leavenworth last Thursday.

Tonight’s game is big for both teams. For starters, it’s the 12th edition of the intracity rivalry, in which the Lions own a 6-5 advantage. In addition, after up-and-down regular seasons, both teams have playoff positioning on their minds. The winner of the district title earns a first-round state playoff game at home, and tonight’s victor will have a leg up in that department.

But on top of all of the usual elements that make the annual City Showdown memorable, tonight’s game has sentimental undertones for LHS.

“It hurts a little bit, it tugs a little bit this week,” Wedd said. “I’m sure when I walk out on the field it’ll be a little different. Our seniors know the responsibility they’re carrying with this last game.”

They may. But it likely is impossible for them to understand the complete magnitude of what the stadium has meant to the school and the community.

Haskell Stadium history

Lawrence High, then known as Liberty Memorial High School, played its first game at Haskell Memorial Stadium in 1930, four years after the venue was dedicated in October of 1926.

Before the school’s first game at Haskell, the Lions played at Kansas University’s Memorial Stadium in 1928 and 1929 and at Cordley Field, just north of where Cordley Elementary School still stands between 18th and 19th streets and Vermont, until 1927.

Throughout the years, many great players and coaches have come through Haskell Stadium – some excelled in high school, others went on to star in college and beyond. John Hadl and Al Woolard, Keith DeLong and Bill Freeman, Jason Thoren and Dick Purdy.

Community charm

The smell, feel, sights and sounds of Haskell Stadium became part of every player who ever suited up in the red and black.

Paul Bost, a backup lineman on the school’s last state championship team of 1995, known for leading the Lions charge onto the field at the start of each game, recalled the feeling 13 years later.

“It was so emotional at the start of those games,” Bost said. “You had the walk from the locker room with your partner, and (1996 graduate) Willie McGinnis and I always buddied up, a couple of wide bodies leading the charge there. During the week, the coaches had instilled everything we needed to know. They put us in position to win games. And then running out onto that field, seeing the lights, hearing the crowd roar, that was the pinnacle.”

Bost remembers playing pick-up games as a child with his friends in the areas behind the end zones. Many children continue that tradition today and Bost said that was one of the things that added to the LHS mystique throughout the years.

“As a kid, playing out there by the track, you just knew that someday you were going to get to play on that field, too,” Bost said. “That was special.”

Adam Green, a 1992 graduate and current LHS assistant coach, said he gets chills each time he walks onto the field to this day.

Green was a standout running back at LHS from 1989-1991 and part of three straight state championship teams. He said his best memories of Haskell Stadium were being motivated by the visiting team taking the field first and the way the entire community filled the north bleachers on Friday nights.

“That always motivated me, to see someone else warming up on your field,” Green said. “That gets you a little more ready to play.”

Nostalgia transcends LHS program

Feelings for Haskell Stadium reach beyond the Lawrence High football program.

Four members of the Free State coaching staff played and/or coached at Lawrence High, including FSHS head coach Bob Lisher, a 1977 LHS graduate.

Because of his time at LHS, Lisher said he understood why Haskell Stadium was a special place and he’s glad to be a part of tonight’s memories.

“I played and coached a lot of games there,” Lisher said. “And so did a lot of my assistants (Chris Enneking, Max Cordova and Brett Oberzan). Haskell was always a big-time place to play.”

Ted Juneau, the current athletic director at Haskell Indian Nations University, who spent time in the 1980s and 1990s at LHS as an administrator, teacher and coach, said people at HINU understood the significance of tonight’s finale as well.

“Until 10 years ago, every employee at Haskell had their kids go through Lawrence High,” Juneau said. “So I think the staff here and the people who have been here a while very well know this is the drawing of an era, the end of a grand chapter.”

There has been talk of continuing to play the annual City Showdown at Haskell Stadium each year. But Juneau said nothing official had been ironed out.

“We’ve had no discussion about whether any high school games will be here beyond this season,” Juneau said. “That doesn’t mean we won’t, it’s just that we have not.”

In addition to being a part of the LHS tradition, Juneau coached against the Lions at Haskell Stadium, when he was an assistant at Topeka High in the late 1970s.

Even then, he thought Lawrence High had one of the best home fields around.

“For me, it was always the feel,” Juneau said. “It was like a small-college atmosphere, and in some ways better than a small college. The size of the band, the enthusiasm of the crowd and seeing how involved the community was in the game was just right.”

Added Bost: “That was our Friday Night Lights.”

A dim future

After this season, when motorists passing Haskell Stadium on 23rd Street see nothing but dim security bulbs on Friday nights, Lawrence High fans everywhere will hurt a little inside.

“It’s depressing,” Bost said. “I wish they could’ve figured something out to keep playing there. In the last 78 years, there have been a whole lot of W’s put on that field. It’s depressing to know that they gave up on 78 years of history. It’ll look like a grave.”

In some ways, that’s what Wedd is hoping it will be tonight, when the Lions go for one more victory.

“There’s a lot of ghosts of great football players hanging around that stadium,” he said. “I’m selfish in that I hope they all show up and rally around us one more time.”