Memorial Stadium (Kent State)
Memorial Stadium circa 1965
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| Former names | Athletic Field, Memorial Field |
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| Location | Kent, Ohio, United States |
| Coordinates | 41°08′52″N 81°20′37″W / 41.147905°N 81.343535°WCoordinates: 41°08′52″N 81°20′37″W / 41.147905°N 81.343535°W |
| Owner | Kent State University |
| Operator | Kent State University |
| Capacity | 7,000 (1950–1954) 12,000 (1954–1965) 20,000 (1965–1969) |
| Surface | natural grass |
| Construction | |
| Broke ground | 1939 (playing field) 1950 (grandstand) |
| Opened | 1941 (playing field) 1950 (grandstand) |
| Closed | 1968 |
| Demolished | 1969 |
| Tenants | |
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Kent State Golden Flashes (NCAA) Football (1941–1968) Men's track and field (1941–1968) |
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Memorial Stadium was a multi-purpose stadium in Kent, Ohio, United States, on the campus of Kent State University. Its primary use was as the home field for the Kent State Golden Flashes football team and also served as the home venue for the KSU men's track and field team. The football and track teams had already been playing on the site since 1941, but with temporary bleachers for seating. The permanent grandstand built and dedicated in 1950, which also included a press box, was the first phase of the stadium, and was later followed by a duplicate grandstand on the opposite side of the field in 1954. Initial plans called for the seating to eventually surround the field, though these plans were largely never realized. During the 1960s, additional bleacher seats were added separate from the two main grandstands on all sides of the field, and brought seating capacity to approximately 20,000 by 1965.
Campus developments in the 1960s and the need to keep the stadium on par with other facilities in the Mid-American Conference, however, led university officials to recommend building a new stadium on a different site rather than continue to expand Memorial Stadium. The stadium was displaced to make way for a new 12-story library and student center complex, originally known as the University Center, built in the late 1960s and early 1970s adjacent to the stadium site. The main seating areas of Memorial Stadium were dismantled in early 1969 and reassembled at the site of the new stadium in a different configuration. Today, the site of Memorial Stadium is largely occupied by the visitor parking lot for the Kent Student Center while the original grandstand of Memorial Stadium is still used as the north end zone at Dix Stadium.
When Kent State Normal College established its first football team in 1920, the team played at Rockwell Field, which was also shared with the baseball team. Rockwell Field was plagued by poor drainage and sod issues and the school found it difficult to schedule home games because of the poor state of the field. In 1939, construction started on new athletic fields along Summit Street with the hope of eventually building a permanent stadium, a project funded by the Works Progress Administration. The area was on what was then the far southwestern edge of the campus, previously known as the College Farm. It was completed in 1941 and included temporary bleacher seating and a cinder track around the field. Adjacent to the football field and track was a baseball field. The first game at the new field, which was initially just referred to as the Athletic Field, was on September 27, 1941, a 58–0 Kent State win over Bluffton College. After World War II ended, the university saw an increase in male enrollment, so additional facilities were built in the area around what was eventually called Memorial Field. A new physical education building for men, now known as the Memorial Athletic and Convocation Center, was built on the hill overlooking Memorial Stadium and opened in December 1950. The university's first men's dorm, Stopher Hall, had opened in 1948, just north of the eventual site of the new gym.
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