Commentary by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — As we debate the future of the Wellington High School i.e. community football field, I can’t help thinking about the old junior high building.

What a colossal mess that has been. We are about to pay off the high school’s 25-year bond issue, and we are still debating what to do with the building that housed so many of our students.

Not that we can do anything about it. The building is now in the hands of a private owner, who appears to have made it into a fortress or something. I keep waiting for him to build a moat and bring in a dragon.

The old Wellington Junior High as it was in 2021. 

One mistake was made when the community correctly voted to pass the bond issue in 2000 to build the new high school. No one addressed the specific plans for the junior high building. Some thought it could be turned into an apartment complex. Others thought it would be a good place for a Cowley College Sumner Campus. But at the time, no one really had any answers for its future.

In hindsight, an additional million dollars needed to be tacked on to the bond issue to demolish the building right then and there.

I understand why the ‘Vote Yes’ group didn’t, and I would have come to the same conclusion. They needed to get the dang bond issue thing passed. And they were already fighting an overabundance of sentimentality. Adding the destruction of something people grew up with would have made that election even more difficult.

But, gosh, such forethought would have been great. We could have built a new locker room complex on that location, added to our parking lot, expanded the tennis courts, and improved the traffic layout of that area. Sellers Park would have conformity, and many issues could have eventually been resolved.

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I’m against building a new football field at the high school.

Not that I don’t like the idea. I agree completely with what retired history teacher/game official/everything else Mike Wilmoth said when he addressed the board a few weeks ago (see here). Combining the track with the football field next to the high school makes good financial sense. And we wouldn’t have to build new locker rooms.

We could build a great state-of-the-art stadium with a bell tower to ring the victory bell and a new bigger, badass bridge for the football players to cross.

It would be the most convenient and cost-effective solution for the taxpayers.

Even the feedlot smell problem seems like it could be solved. Maybe simply by asking:

“Hey Dudes, We are playing a football game this Friday night. Could you stop cutting your meat for those few hours and do something different like have an accounting meeting or something?”

But just because it is the “best” solution doesn’t make it the “right” one.

New high school field proposal. (Click to enlarge)

There is the problem of perception. You would alienate a great number of people by moving it – and since we have a hard enough time getting people to the games anyway, that would make things worse. And even if the feedlot closed or turned into a perfume factory, people still wouldn’t go in fear that there could be a smell.

Also, Sellers is historical. We played the first-night football game there, for goodness sake. And it fits into the nature of the whole ambiance of the park. We play football and tennis in the fall and baseball in the spring and summer.

I don’t really get into rituals. They bore me. But people like crossing that bridge that their grandfather did and ringing the same victory bell.

But for me, the biggest problem is what happens to Sellers Stadium after one is built at the high school.

I fear it would become: “Wellington Junior High Building Part 2.”

New high school field advocates go: “Well, it would become the middle school field.” Yeah, that will work until a well-intentioned parent or Middle School principal says, “You know what would be cool if these 7th and 8th graders can play on the fancy-prance one at the high school.”

Then they go play at the high school stadium.

We are then left with an unused field that you still have to mow and water, keep the bathrooms operating, and a press box full of scoreboard equipment that needs to be there in case a game will actually be played. It would just be like that awful Cessna Stadium at Wichita State University that is basically used once a year to host a state track meet.

And if the football stadium deteriorates, so will the baseball field. Everyone loves Hibbs-Hooten Field. But if you have an eyesore that is the “Junior High Building Part 2” next to it, people are going to grumble. And negative vibes can only drown out the good ones at of our great baseball park.

So I will have to side for the first time in my life with the traditionalists — the let’s-keep-everything-the-samers.

Let’s keep the location as is.

Whew. I’m with the traditionalists. Damn, I must be getting old.

But don’t worry. Part 2 of this article will be coming soon, which will surely tick a few of you traditionalists off.

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