By TOMMY REZAC
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph and Missouri Western State University will be the home for MSHSAA state football championship games over the next few years.
The MSHSAA Board of Directors this month voted to approve St. Joseph as the host city for the Missouri 8-man championship game in 2024. Spratt Stadium will then host the state title games for all classes from 2025-28.
Brett Esely, Director of the St. Joseph Sports Commission, worked in conjunction with Western to make this a reality. He says St. Joseph is a great fit with its facilities, community engagement and participation.
"It's exciting," Esely told KFEQ Radio. "Any time we can bring an event of this magnitude to St. Joseph and Buchanan County, we need to look into it and make it possible. I also think we have a great reputation for hosting championship events, which is a big feather in the cap of our community."
The 11-man state title games will still be at Faurot Field in Columbia this fall.
St. Joseph first received the bid packet for hosting the 8-man title game last October. MSHSAA officials then had a visit to the MWSU campus in January.
From there, both parties expressed interest in having St. Joseph host all of the state football title games, beginning in 2025. The St. Joseph Convention and Visitors Bureau, along with the University, submitted the bid for all the games on April 1 and officially got approval about two weeks after that.
Mizzou has hosted all of the state football championships since 2016. St. Joseph and Missouri Western previously hosted the 8-man championship from 1998-2007.
Missouri Western’s football program already gets lots of publicity, as the facilities are used to host Kansas City Chiefs training camp every year since 2010.
Colin McQuillan is the special teams coach at Western. A Wathena, KS native and former coach at Union Star, McQuillan says bringing these games to Spratt will no doubt be an added bonus for the program.
"Recruiting, admissions and people being able to check out Missouri Western and see what's available and going on here," he said. "Football wise, it's going to be awesome in terms of recruiting, but getting more football fans in the stands is going to be awesome for the community."
McQuillan helps spearhead both 8-man and 11-man football camps at Spratt Stadium in the summer.
He acknowledges St. Joseph isn’t exactly the most central location for this, but he’s hopeful that teams will see why St. Joseph is such a great host, once the teams get to the campus.
"I know the St. Louis schools won't like the travel as much," McQuillan noted, "but once they get here, they're going to realize that the atmosphere is going to be awesome. The venue and everything that's around it is going to be very, very successful."
For nearly 30 years, state football championships in Missouri had either been held at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, or at Mizzou. Faurot Field has been the host since 2016.
Esely says nowadays, bigger cities have been less eager to host state high school championship events. He believes Spratt Stadium will be the perfect atmosphere for state football, because of the facility and also the region’s overall interest in the sport.
"You don't have to play (in Columbia or St. Louis) to create a great championship experience," Esely said. "Frankly, when I think of Spratt Stadium and 7,200 fans packed in there tight, with the bells and whistles that facility has...I've been a part of some really cool moments there and I look forward to a lot more cool moments moving forward."
The 10,000-seat stadium boasts a 2,500 square foot videoboard and a synthetic turf playing surface.
"The venue speaks for itself. It's the right size. It's got the bells and whistles, the logistics, the infrastructure. The other thing I think that's great to boast, especially to a high school student is, 'It's on a college campus, and ya know, the Chiefs train here in the summertime.'"
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