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Memorial Stadium is a double-decked concrete and steel stadium in northeast Bakersfield, California, near the Panorama Bluffs. It features a fast Bermuda grass football field with a high-centered crown that was renovated in 2014 and an all-weather track. Located at the corner of University Avenue and Mount Vernon Avenue on the campus of Bakersfield College (BC), it is primarily used for American football, and is the home field of the B.C. Renegades. The stadium holds roughly 20,000 people and was built in 1955. It is named to honor the war dead of World War I and World War II. A plaque at the finish line commemorates its dedication. ==History== Memorial Stadium was completed in 1955 before the remainder of the campus opened for students in 1956 when Bakersfield College would move from its original location at Bakersfield High School where it was founded in 1913, to the new campus in Northeast Bakersfield. Bakersfield College is the 2nd oldest junior college in California behind Santa Barbara City College. Ad hoc football squads were first created in the 1920s resulting in the moniker nickname "Renegades." Memorial Stadium would be the first structure to be completed at the new site. Football games were being played on site before classes were ever held on the new campus. In fact, during the first semester students were served lunches out of the concession stands because the cafeteria was still under construction.〔(Bakersfield Memorial Stadium ). ''Bakersfield Magazine''. October 2010. Accessed: 11-01-2011.〕 For its first 40 years, Memorial Stadium enjoyed huge success based on its attendance of Bakersfield College football games. Lasting into the early 1990s, it was unusual for a B.C. football game not to have 12,000 fans or more in the stands. Games have been televised live and on tape-delay in the past. Attendance was so large that the college's academic extracurricular activities were all funded by football ticket sales until the 1990s. The stadium was the home to the first ever junior college bowl game, and California's formerly most prestigious junior college bowl game, the (Kern County Shrine Club ) Potato Bowl. The Potato Bowl, established in 1948, was a fund raiser for the Shriners Hospital for Burned and Crippled Children in Los Angeles. The Potato Bowl no longer exists due to unfair fees demanded by the State Junior College Commission on Athletics (COA) to be a part of the reformed state JC playoff system (The COA is now known as the California Community College Athletic Association or CCCAA). The Potato Bowl hence was replaced by the Golden Empire Bowl, which was part of the California J.C. Football State Playoffs, and was supported and sponsored by local businesses. However, the Golden Empire Bowl folded in 2011. Sponsors cited a lack of ticket money for previous bowl games that left them losing money. These sponsors were hoping to break-even with their sponsorship every year as a way to serve their community. Memorial Stadium hosted the 2012 CCCAA state football title game where Bakersfield College defeated City College of San Francisco in front of a crowd of over 16,000. Memorial Stadium has had numerous Renegade football games exceed attendances of 20,000. The largest ever crowd was 23,701 for a high school football game between Bakersfield High School and Bishop Amat Memorial High School from La Puente on Saturday, October 1, 1994. Bishop Amat, with a #1 national ranking, won 34-3. Memorial Stadium features an all weather track that was updated in 1989. Unfortunately, the track surface is currently (2014) in need of renovation. It hosts high school and junior college track events. The track was once the training track for the Soviet Union track teams when they visited the United States. It also was the track on which Jim Ryun established a world-record in the one-mile run in 1967. The track has hosted A.A.U. events and state high school meets. Memorial Stadium occasionally hosts high school games. Until the early 1990s, it was the Friday night home field of both Highland High School and East Bakersfield High School on alternating weekends. Changes by B.C.'s college president in the mid-1990s led both schools to finally install lights on their own fields after decades of renting Memorial Stadium and other fields. Presently, Memorial Stadium is used for high school football games only when it is deemed that an existing high school field is too small to handle the anticipated large crowds; this generally occurs only during playoffs. On Friday, August 29, 2014, Memorial Stadium hosted two high school games billed as the Kick Off Classic. Local schools Ridgeview and Frontier played in the first game with Ridgeview winning 42-21. The featured second game pitted Southern California power Oaks Christian from Westlake Village (ranked #19 in California) against perennial Central Section power and defending State Division 1 champion Bakersfield High (ranked #11 in California) won by Bakersfield 34-21. Memorial Stadium has hosted a high school event like this before in the mid-1990s. A series was created featuring the top three high schools from Bakersfield and the Fresno area. An annual triple header was played twice at Memorial Stadium and once in Clovis at Lamonica Stadium before interest waned after three seasons. This series featured Bakersfield High, Foothill High, and West High from Bakersfield against the Fresno-area schools Clovis High, Clovis West High, and Buchanan High. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Memorial Stadium (Bakersfield)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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