Taylor Meeks

Sports Editor

In 1933, teams of men and horses went to work on constructing an athletic venue for Idaho State University at the base of Red Hill. After three years of flattening the earth, moving dirt and building walls with rock mined from Red Hill, the Spud Bowl was born and saw its first football competition on November 11, 1936. 

Since its beginning, the Spud Bowl underwent many transformations over a period of several years. In honor of former ISU President William “Bud” Davis, the venue was renamed to Davis Field. Other changes included  permanently relocating the football team to Holt Arena and converting the venue into a soccer field and track and field facility.

Davis Field has been an integral and historical piece of Idaho State University’s identity for many years. It’s been the training ground for countless athletes, including Olympians, and it’s seen a plethora of championship titles. 

However, since 2007, the facility has failed to meet several NCAA standards, rendering the venue unfit for Big Sky Conference championships, all track and field meets and non-conference soccer matches. With most of its seating being condemned, having an improper drainage system for the track, and several other safety issues, renovations have been overdue for quite some time.

“We just had to find a way to get it done, and it really became a priority of President Satterlee because he recognized that a lot of our student-athletes were a part of a Division I program and couldn’t host a meet,” said Athletic Director Pauline Thiros. “It’s a beloved venue for our university, there’s a lot of history there, and I think there was just a realization that there’s a real shame to watch it go into such disrepair that it couldn’t even be used, and we weren’t meeting our responsibility if we allowed that to happen.”

After receiving funding from a number of sources, the $7.1 million dollar Davis Field renovation began on March 18, 2020. According to Thiros, if progress remains uninterrupted, the rebirth of the brand new facility should be dedicated in November of this year.

The Davis Field renovations include:

• Restoring and improving the soccer field by widening the field to meet regulation width and NCAA requirements. A 5-foot runout space between the sideline and the track will be created, thus improving athlete safety and making the soccer field eligible to host championships and non-conference matches.
• The track will be replaced and drainage for the track and the field will be improved. The field events area – for events such as long jump, pole vault, discus and high jump – will be moved from inside the oval of the track to a newly developed area on the south side of Davis Field, fixing another safety issue.
• Modifying the track geometry to increase the speed of the track.  The track will also be leveled to eliminate an 18-inch height differential between the east and west side. ISU track and field will then be able to host outdoor track meets, including conference championships, at Davis Field.
• Providing a new video scoreboard that addresses the needs of both track and field and soccer.
• The bleacher problems will be fixed. This includes taking out the condemned bleachers on the Red Hill side of the field, putting in a retaining wall, landscaping a terraced grass hill for informal seating, and replacing the west bleachers with new aluminum bleachers that provide ADA accessibility.
• LED lights will be added, which will benefit both athletic programs and extend the practice and competition times into the evening. The lights will also have an entertainment package that will flash for player introductions and gameday special effects.
• The west and south berms will be removed in order to create more space to co-locate soccer and track and field facilities.
• The design of the entire facility will comply with ISU’s new branding initiative.

“Most importantly, this is a statement,” Thiros said. “I think that when you provide a certain level of facility or a level of care to your student-athletes, you’re making a really clear statement about how much you value them.”

Davis Field operates as the competition venue for 79 track and field athletes and 19 soccer athletes, which amounts to roughly 30 percent of all Bengal athletics. The university was at a disservice to those student-athletes for the Davie Field facilities to be nearly inoperable across the board. 

Not only this, but by not providing a proper competition venue for two of the university’s women’s sports, the issue was veering into a gender equity problem.

These long overdue improvements and additions will elevate Davis Field to be one of, if not the most, beautiful facilities in the Big Sky and bring back the opportunity of hosting competitions and championships once again. Idaho State has not hosted an outdoor track meet since 2007, and soccer has struggled to schedule non-conference opponents willing to play in the facility. 

“It’s a step forward, and it’s a commitment that we aren’t going to ignore our responsibilities,” Thiros said. “We are going to find ways to move our programs and our facilities forward in a responsible way that’s within our means. We are not going to just give up when there are hard problems to solve.”

The construction manager and general contractor for the project is McAlvain Companies Inc. from Boise. The project engineer is Keller Associates with offices in Meridian and Pocatello. Despite the complications that COVID-19 has imposed on the university, state and nation, construction progress shouldn’t be interrupted and proper social distancing will be maintained. 

Additionally, finding a practice venue for the track and field and soccer teams isn’t a problem anymore seeing that every athletic program across the board has been cancelled for the remainder of the semester. Though November 2020 is an aggressive end date, Thiros has confidence that the endeavor will be completed by then.

“It was great to have so much support across the institution for the venue,” Thiros said. “Much like the ‘I’ on the side of [Red] Hill, I think that Davis Field is an important part of our identity as an institution, and a lot of people really wanted to preserve that and make sure we were putting our best foot forward with that venue.”