Stallworth Stadium is the neutral site for Baytown’s three premier High Schools to meet for local competitive events. The schools that play at the stadium are Goose Creek Memorial, Robert E. Lee High School, and Sterling High School, which all 3 schools have a standing rivalry. Stallworth field was built in late sixties as a neutral site for then just Lee and Sterling, because Lee’s Stadium was too small. Back in its hay-day, early seventies and eighties thousands of people would attend the Lee vs. Sterling game, in fact while campaigning through Texas President Ford stopped and watch the Ganders play the Sterling Rangers. With the addition of the new High School in 2009 talent as well as attendance to these games have went down dramatically, to an almost mediocre level like many things in Baytown including the Mall and many parts of Old Baytown’s.
Stallworth field didn’t become relevant to me until at that time my local High School team traveled to Baytown to play as I called it “Star Wars field”. I was so happy to travel to the game and watch it at Star Wars field, thinking it would be some magnificent field that everything was Star Wars related but when we showed up I was highly disappointed to see the correct name Stallworth Stadium that it killed my ambition to even watch the game. Even though it wasn’t Star Wars related (which would have been awesome) I can remember as a kid at the game in awe at the Coliseum like stands, which took my mind off of the fact it was not Star Wars related. Running to the top of the stands was by far the best thing to do, just to look down at the people walking into the standing and thinking, man I could hock a serious loogie on someone but never had the courage to do it. When the game was over and my High School completely dominated over Baytown Lee I remember thinking when I get in High School I wanted to play at the stadium with the big stands and cool press box on top of the stands.
My senior year of High School I moved to the newest built school Goose Creek Memorial. I was blessed with the starting role of linebacker for their football team and had the privilege to play and call Stallworth Stadium my home field. I didn’t realize how nice the stadium was until our first Friday night game. You notice the field is special when you first step onto the pillowey like turf and feel your cleats slowly sink in like your standing in quick sand only you can feel the bottom and it’s not life threating. The best part of playing at Stallworth was warming up before the games it allows you to soak in every aspect of the stadium, you can feel the people’s eyes on you and you’re surrounded on both sides by these concrete barriers they call stands, you can see the Dallas Cowboy like scoreboard (and in case you don’t know the Dallas Cowboys have the biggest scoreboard in the NFL.) Everything on the field was up to date and state of the art but when you walk in to the locker room you immediately are reminded it was built in the late sixties. You are greeted by the door an odor the smells like the old school bus you used to ride to school. You also notice an outdated chalkboard on almost every wall not in use, and a dry erase board on wheels that everyone used and the coaches actually waited to use it. The bathrooms had stalls like a normal community bathroom but had no urinals, only what I can describe to you as a pee trough. The outdated locker room only made me appreciate how much I like Stallworth because it reminds you of all the past teams that have played there. I was truly blessed to play here at Stallworth and made a lot of good memories there from beating a weak Galveston Ball team by thirty points or the time we got beat by the number one team in the state by thirty and our fans where going nuts over a touchdown we scored late in the fourth quarter that didn’t mean anything due to the fact we were so far down, it was like taking a rock off a mountain.
Stallworth’s impact on Baytown’s community is huge, it provides revenue for the town and gives kids in the area hope that they can play a professional sport like football or soccer. Stallworth also host the annual Bayou Bowl, which is an All-Star game between Texas’s premier football athletes and Louisiana’s premier football athletes. Though I was never got the opportunity to play in the famous Bayou Bowl that’s televised some of my teammates did and in fact that is the only reason college scouts offered them athletic scholarships was because of their performance in the games. The stadium also saves the Goose Creek Consolidated school district money so each three high schools wouldn’t have three separate mediocre fields, they can have one NFL like field with the privilege of having a Jumbo-tron and other many commodities that’s required to have a nice football field. That is what in my opinion makes Stallworth Stadium one of the best stadiums in the State of Texas
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