By Tiffany L. Rehbein
With the MSU-Northern Lights first home game slated for Saturday, Sept. 4, against Western Montana College, Blue Pony Stadium is being readied for play.
This year Northern will be selling reserved seats and reserved parking spaces for Lights fans
With the reserved seating comes some fresh Blue Pony blue paint. MSU-Northern rents the stadium from Havre Public Schools for use in Frontier Conference play.
Charlie Klimas, Havre High School athletic director, said that about two sections of bleachers had reserved seating numbers painted on them with the Blue Pony blue and white.
We asked that they be painted blue and white, Klimas said, referring to the Blue Pony Stadium Committee that formed last April to work through some issues in sharing the field.
According to Klimas, those issues included the fact that the college uses narrower goal posts than the high school. The college also uses a 25-second clock at both ends of the field that the high school does not provide.
An important thing for people to understand is that MSU-Northern relies on volunteer folks to get a lot of things accomplished, Klimas said. These are just an example of things we talked about. Theres a lot of stuff that needs to be done.
He added that there were about 18 items that needed to be addressed last spring at the meeting.
Both schools were pretty satisfied with what happened, Klimas said.
Havre High charges $3 per reserved parking spot for high school football games. Northern will also pay Havre High $3 per spot, therefore, the price per spot for fans to attend college games will be slightly higher. The money raised will be placed in a fund to help build new stadium bleachers next year.
We feel really good about the cooperation weve had at this point, Klimas said.
Another point of controversy that ended through cooperation was the issue of concessions at the games. Due to inventory questions and clean-up procedures, the agreement was that MSU-Northern would bring in their own booth, Klimas said.
Both parties involved thought it would be best to bring their own concession stand in on wheels, he said. We are all doing our best to help get this college football program off the ground.
Northern officials said the concessions for Saturdays game will be provided by the Havre High School booster club.
Trenches are currently being dug for the 25 second clocks and the goal posts are being erected, officials said.
