CMU needs a Maverick Stadium

Colorado Mesa University is not a high school, so why do we share a stadium with four of them? Scheduling NCAA football games between four different high school football schedules make life difficult for CMU. But more than that, it says something about the quality of the team and the investment CMU places in the team. While CMU has experienced a lot of growing pains in the past few years and will continue them more with the new construction of the CMU Hotel, the new dorm building and the new track, a major missing piece of campus life is a stadium. 

Other colleges are fortunate enough to have invested in a stadium right on campus or have been able to utilize a larger stadium for collegiate use. Colorado Mesa University senior Jill Caldwell has been able to experience this. She transferred to CMU after having her freshman year at the University of Colorado-Boulder. 

“For people who are not actually involved in a college sport, it is hard to get the motivation to go support your team. When I was going to CU Boulder, going to the games where such an event you didn’t really want to miss it,”  Caldwell explains. 

CU has the historic Folsom field right in the middle of the Boulder campus. It has been around since 1924 and seats about 50,000 fans on a weekly basis during football season. Now CMU is not CU-Boulder, however, the simple impact of having a stadium on campus increases attendance and student involvement tenfold. 

“The excitement in the stands and the school spirit was nothing I had seen or felt before. The fact that CMU does not have a stadium on campus or even a larger one close by makes it hard to want to attend the games and show our school spirit,” Caldwell said.

 As a Grand Junction native, Caldwell has had more than a few memories at Stoker Stadium, the same stadium that CMU shares with four other high school student bodies. 

“It is sometimes difficult to justify going to a college football game at the same stadium I went for high school games. If CMU had a larger or on-campus stadium, I know that I would go to more games, feel more connected and want to represent the school more than I already do,” Caldwell said. 

Recently, a lot of scrutinies have been pressed on students who attend tailgates but not football games. And perhaps the greatest argument left outside of that debate is the absence of a Maverick football stadium. Mavericks want to support Mavericks, and it would easier to do that if they can go to a stadium that actually has their logo on the 50-yard line instead of a plain painted circle filled with turf.