New field at Twentynine Palms makes its long-awaited football debut Thursday night

For years, opposing football teams would travel up or over to the high desert to face Twentynine Palms and play on the old, uneven junior high field known affectionately as "The Goat Pasture."

Those days are over. The Wildcats will play their first-ever home game at their new on-campus football field at 7 p.m. on Thursday against Victor Valley.

The new field is synthetic turf known as FieldTurf and includes a new track, a new scoreboard, new bleachers and a new pressbox. There is an oversized "29" emblazoned on the 50-yard line. One end zone says Wildcats and the other says 29 Palms.

"We're excited, and we don't want to come out here flat," said Wildcats' senior linebacker Tavious Thrasher. "No matter what happens in the future, we'll always be the first football team to play on this field. It will be a part of school history. We want to start it with a positive legacy and then build on it."

While this will be the first football game on the field, it won't be the first event. In fact, the field has been operational since December, so winter sports like soccer and spring sports like track and field have already participated in the pristine new facility. The school also had its 2023 graduation on the field.

Twentynine Palms football has new field, new focus heading into 2023 season

But there is something special about the first football game. When the ball kicks off on Thursday on the new turf under the fancy and sophisticated new LED lights, it will be a big moment for the school and the community.

"In all honesty, being a member of this community, being schooled here, I think it's pretty special," said head football coach Eric Tili. "What the school has been able to do, I mean, I'm a nostalgic guy, and I have memories at the (junior high field), but I'm looking forward to creating some new memories here, and I'm honored — yes 'honored' is the best word — to be a part of it."

The project has been several years in the making, with the first germ of the idea starting back in 2017 when the Morongo Unified School District bandied about the idea of a new athletic field at both Yucca Valley High and Twentynine Palms High. The Yucca Valley field was completed in 2021, but the Twentynine Palms High field required more time to put together the funding and leap other hurdles prompted by COVID-19 and supply-chain issues.

The athletic field is part of a campus-wide project that included a freshening of the electrical infrastructure as well as several ADA compliance upgrades on top of the athletic facility improvements. According to the district's maintenance and operations director David Daniels, it all totaled to about $6.3 million, with money coming in part from district reserves, a federal ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fun) grant and a donation from the LA 84 Foundation which is a Los Angeles-based group that champions youth sports programs and public education. That group also helped with the Yucca Valley High School field.

There are some special touches with the new field. The lights, in particular, are a new type of LED stadium light that can be manipulated to flash, or pulse or dance in correlation to what's happening on the field. The track is green and gray to match the school's colors, as opposed to the traditional red. Daniels said having these small extras, even if it costs a little more, was important to everyone involved.

"I don't want to go so far as to say we spared no expense, because, of course, we spared expense, it was a budget-conscious project, but I will say when you spend a lot of money on these facilities, you want them to last a long time," Daniels said. "And to have these special touches for the students who have been waiting such a long time, I think, is a notable part of this process."

Principal Michael Ruggiero said the new field has filled the student body and the community with pride, but that having a new facility will have other substantive advantages, one of the most important of which is in regard to scheduling.

In the 2024-25 school year, Twentynine Palms will shift from the current eight-team Desert Valley League, to a new four-team version. That means instead of finding just three non-league opponents in a 10-game football schedule, the school will now have to find seven. The stadium will help, he said.

"You're trying to attract opponents out here and we need to convince teams to drive two hours out to the desert, having a great facility makes it that much more appealing," Ruggiero said. "It will help us get those contracts."

But Ruggiero, Tili and Thrasher are all in concert when describing the new field's primary effect, which is cultivating school pride.

"Starting back when the girls' soccer team was the first to play on it, then track and now with the football team, there's pride and excitement for sure," Ruggiero said. "Having hoped to get a facility like this for a long time and to have the all-weather track, the new home stands, the vantage point, the press box ... every time a kid goes out there for the first time, they're so excited. They've traveled to other schools and seen things like this, but now they are super excited to have a facility we can be proud of."

Shad Powers is a columnist for The Desert Sun. Reach him at shad.powers@desertsun.com.

Twentynine Palms home schedule

The football team has five home games, and the school is planning a full ribbon-cutting ceremony with fanfare at a future home game. They wanted that celebration to be on a Friday night, so it won't be before Thursday's game.

Aug. 31 (Thur.): vs. Victor Valley

Sept. 8: vs. Rubidoux

Sept. 15: vs. Banning

Sept. 29: vs. Desert Mirage

Oct. 20: vs. Desert Hot Springs

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: New Twentynine Palms football field ready for its long-awaited debut