BY IVAN PALACIOS AND MATT WILSON | STAFF WRITERS
MISSION — The Mission Eagles and the Mission Veterans Patriots will be without a home for the second time in four years this season due to ongoing stadium repairs, although athletes will still be playing and coaches are feeling confident.
Tom Landry Stadium is a Mission landmark. Named for one of the city’s most famous sons, Landry’s statue towers in front of the facade. Bill Clinton stopped there on a visit to the Rio Grande Valley in 1998; thousands of athletes have played hundreds of games to the roar of the fans in the stands.
There won’t be any roar this fall. It’s a disappointment, Mission CISD spokesman Craig Verley said, and a challenge, but not one that the district hasn’t managed to overcome before.
“Everyone likes to have their home games at Tom Landry Stadium, but the main thing this year is arrangements have been made so that we can still have our home games in stadiums that will allow our student athletes to be able to play their games in front of family, friends and fans,” he said.
In 2019 the district began launching inspections of the stadium, which indicated a more formal assessment needed to be completed, he said.
Those assessments found structural issues that the board voted to address. Verley said he wasn’t at liberty to say what caused the structural damage, and wasn’t sure if those causes had even been definitively determined.
“And since those structural issues were first identified, that’s when we stopped using the bleachers of Tom Landry Stadium,” he said.
Repair efforts sent Mission football players on the road for both home and away games in 2017, but a $1,024,850 repair project launched to address structural issues on July 28 isn’t expected to be completed until February.
Verley said the district hoped to have the stadium functional for this season, but that the realities of required processes, contract negotiations and longer construction timelines prevented that from happening.
“When dealing with the construction processes of this nature and this dollar amount, there are specific steps that are required,” he said. “Bidding processes and reviews, getting contracts negotiated with the approved contractor once that is done.”
“So that’s what we’re moving forward with at this point, is getting the repairs done so that we can get to reutilize all aspects of the stadium as quickly as possible,” Verley said.
Neither the Mission Eagles or the Mission Veterans Patriots are a strangers to playing on the road, having played the entire 2017 season at different stadiums due to a similar situation.
Current Mission Eagles head coach Danny Longoria was on staff during that season, handling all scheduling for the team during that time. He remembers having to scramble to find different stadiums to play their games that year.
This season, Longoria said it was a smoother process, with the Hidalgo Pirates football schedule working in the Eagles favor, allowing them to play all but one of their “home” games at Bill Pate Stadium in Hidalgo.
Longoria praised the school districts around the Valley for opening their doors to them for a second time despite the current COVID-19 situation.
“We’re very lucky that in the Valley we have school districts that are very kind to each other,” he said. “We have awesome athletic coordinators. We have awesome administrators from other schools. You make a call and tell them your situation; everybody is willing to help.”
As for his team, Longoria said they’re remaining positive, thinking back to last season when playing football was an uncertainty amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I told them this was the least of our worries,” he said. “Football is here. We’re going to play football. We get to play a full season. We get to be in the hallways. We get to have pep rallies. We get to see the girls play volleyball. They get their senior year experience. Last year, they didn’t.”
Still, Longoria recognizes that challenges do come with playing on the road, travel being the biggest obstacle for the team. Even then, he puts a positive spin on those challenges.
“I love riding the bus with my kids because that’s where you get to know the kids,” Longoria said. “That’s where you get to talk to them about their goals, dreams and what they want to do. It’s just that extra time. And the boys get to spend time with each other and get to know each other more too. So, that’s all I see.”
Meanwhile, Patriots head coach David Gilpin, who is entering his 13th year as the head coach, said his team isn’t worried about where they play.
“It’s just irrelevant,” he said. “Like the old coaching cliché goes, we control what we can control. We don’t control this. We have nothing to do with this. When the stadium is ready and they tell us we can play, we’ll be glad to get back over there because it’s a beautiful facility. But, until that time occurs, we’ll travel somewhere else and we’ll play.”
Both Gilpin and Longoria have their teams focused on preparing for the season, regardless of where that may be.
“You play half your games on the road every year,” Gilpin said. “You’re travelling every year. I think people make a little bigger out of it than it really is. To some people, it may be. Some people may act like the sky is falling. What are we going to do? We’re going to treat it like we are treating our other five games. We’re going to go play our game.”
“Our kids are excited. They don’t care where they play. They’re going to play football. Our attitude is, ‘We’re the Mission Eagles and we’re going to strap it on and get out there and play Eagle football.’ That’s it. That’s our model right now and we’re going to get after it. It’s a situation we’re in but honestly it hasn’t even fazed us,” Longoria said.
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