McDonogh School’s historic football stadium will have a new look. The Owings Mills school is debuting a new video scoreboard Friday afternoon as the Eagles open their home schedule with Penn Charter School.
New goalposts and a press box are part of the renovations at John McDonogh Stadium, which hosted its first game in 1938. Eagles’ athletic director Mickey Deegan said the press box will be ready for next weekend’s game with Woodberry Forest (VA). She said an outside donor provided the funding for the project.
“We’re delighted to have someone spruce up the old girl,” said Deegan. “It sort came out of the blue at the beginning of the summer. It wasn’t something we had on our priority list.”
Deegan said the Daktronics scoreboard is similar to the one at Archbishop Spalding’s new stadium. The state of the art display will benefit the entire school.
“You can do movie night, you can have lower school play day with cool music playing,” said Deegan. “A lot of kids are going to benefit. It’s going to be a great source of entertainment.”
Installation of the scoreboard was completed earlier in the week and the goal posts were placed before Labor Day. Deegan described the removal of the prior goal posts as “extracting the tooth of a dinosaur.”
Eagles’ assistant athletic director Matt MacMullan said it “took about a week” for the removal and placement of the goal posts. He said the base of the original posts were about eight feet deep and eight feet wide.
“It makes a big difference. It’s a beautiful stadium and everybody loves the grass field,” said MacMullan, who’s coordinating the project. “It’s a great place to watch a game.”
