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Football is very important to the city of Allen. It’s a place where youth football coaches recruit 12-year-old players with Gatorade and Now and Laters, where anything less than a state championship is a disappointment.
This passion is most fully expressed in Eagle Stadium, the state-of-the-art, $60 million football field where Allen High School plays its home games. When it opened in 2012, Allen ISD wasn’t shy about showing it off to the media who arrived to gawk.
To its credit, the district also isn’t being shy about highlighting significant flaws in the stadium’s construction — cracks in the concourse that are .25 to .75 inches wide, according to information presented at a press conference this afternoon.
The cracks were first there before the stadium opened but were dismissed as normal. They have grown significantly since then. The stadium will be closed until at least June, meaning Allen’s class of 2014 will have to find somewhere else to graduate from. More importantly, the team’s home football games are reportedly in jeopardy.
Send your story tips to the author, Eric Nicholson.
