JV football to host home opener at CHS amid ongoing construction at Spartan Field

The Connersville Spartan junior varsity football team will open the 2025 home schedule at Spartan Field on Saturday. The Connersville football program has already moved 2 varsity games originally scheduled as home contests due to ongoing construction on the Spartan Field bleachers. Connersville Head Coach Ryan Lynch spoke during the Public Comments portion near the end of a three-hour long Fayette County School Board meeting on Tuesday.

“I’m here as a dual agent,” Lynch said, “as football coach and a citizen. I feel like there’s a lot of negativity right now, and I want to turn it into a positive. I want to move forward so I want to be the part of that.”

Community frustration has mounted concerning the bleachers project which began with the demolition of the former stands at the conclusion of the 2024 football season. Project delays over the summer pushed the construction deadline to a still undetermined date.

“Last year I got a phone call that first Friday night of the season that said, ‘we’ve broken four boards tonight,’” Fayette County School Corporation Superintendent Jeremy Duncan said. “That very next week, we replaced a lot of the boards with aluminum just to make sure we were safe, and we can get through the season. We were faced with a problem we had to solve. We tried to find a solution. We vetted [and] checked references. I called five different places, and we did our homework. Unfortunately, sometimes people let you down, and that’s the reality of where we are. We found throughout the process that permits weren’t secured as they should be.”

The Spartans have a non-conference road game in Madison on Friday, followed by a road game at Rushville on Friday, September 19. The next scheduled home varsity game is for Homecoming against Crispus Attucks on Friday, September 26.

“Everybody wants to know what’s going on with the bleachers [and] are we going to play Homecoming,” Lynch said. “It’s not just football. It’s band, it’s the cheerleaders, it’s the Spartanettes, it’s the middle school, [and] youth football. We’re finding out this field is pretty important to a lot of people.”

Representatives from the football team and the School Corporation went to Grandview Elementary School to scout for temporary solutions. The decision was made to host Saturday’s junior varsity contest with Madison at Connersville High School as a test case for the upcoming Homecoming game.

“We looked at how we could funnel people in,” Lynch said. “How we can still get into the restrooms, where we would put temporary bleachers, and that’s what we’re doing this Saturday. Hopefully, we’re going to get bleachers for homecoming, but I think we’ve made a contingent plan. I had a lot of parents come to me. I asked them to let me handle this and be the lead for Spartan football.”

The ongoing construction at Spartan Field is one of four projects currently underway for the school corporation. Along with the football bleachers, renovations have begun on the CHS pool and Frazee Elementary School. The bleachers and press box at the varsity baseball field have yet to be completed, and considerations are being made for renovations at Eastview and Fayette Central.