TULSA, Okla. — The Central High Braves played their homecoming game, Friday night, against the Mannford Pirates. This game was a home coming for more reasons than one.
"This is just…it’s fabulous. This is a dream," Kirby Counce, Central High member of the 1979 graduating class, said.
Friday night was a dream come true for Counce and every other Brave who's walked the halls of Central High over the past 115 years. The football team ran on its own home field for the first time in school history.
"This has been decades in waiting this moment," Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Deborah Gist said.
Over the years, the Braves played all their home games at either Booker T. Washington or Webster High. Friday, they clashed at their brand new Braves Stadium against the Pirates.
"The children see that they matter. They don’t have to go every game to another stadium," TPS District 3 Board Member Jennettie Marshall said. "They have a place they can now call home.”
Their new home was built thanks to TPS District 3 parents who approved the bond package to start on the $3 million dollar stadium. The project, one of pride and purpose for Braves attending Central High and Braves of years past.
"Once a Brave, always a Brave," Counce said.
Counce remembers marching with the school band on an old grass field where the new field turf now lays.
“I wish we would’ve had it, but now is the time. Now we’ve got it and now is the time for us to shine," he said.
Shine on for the next century of Central football. The Braves are finally home.
"We're a 115-year-old school. We finally got our own field," Counce said. "Man, that's powerful."
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