New-look Hound Pound taking shape

By Jon Dykstra | August 5, 2024 |

JON DYKSTRA/THE FORUM
The work continues at the Maryville High School football and soccer fields on Saturday. The turf is scheduled to be ready for play on August 19.

MARYVILLE, Mo. — The build up to the fall sports season is always one of the most exciting times on the calendar.

There are no high school sports, no college sports and not even very many professional sports going on outside of baseball and the WNBA most years — the Olympics have provided sports fans some excitement this year — but nothing that compares to Friday night lights and high school sports.

In Maryville, those lights will be shining on something new this year.

The Spoofhound athletic fields are in the midst of some massive changes this year with new turf and scoreboards at the football and soccer field as well as the baseball and softball field.

For activities director and head football coach Matt Webb, who is also a Spoofhound alum, it has been fun to watch the progress each day.

“It has been unique and it has been exciting,” Webb said. “It is like with any construction project. You start it and you know things may not work on schedule. The coach in me is Type A and as impatient as they come. So to have that patience and see that work everyday — it has been unique.

“I’m learning a lot, learning how the process works. It has been really educational.”

The scoreboards are the first project that went in with Nodaway Valley Bank sponsoring both. For the baseball and softball field, it is a traditional scoreboard with inning-by-inning scoring, and balls, strikes and outs showing. It also has an increasingly important feature for high school baseball with the pitch count of each pitcher displayed.

In high school baseball, juniors and seniors are limited to 105 pitches and freshmen and sophomores are limited to 95. The addition of pitch counts to the scoreboard will surely save the scorekeepers plenty of questions from fans throughout the game.

The football scoreboard is even more exciting with the board sitting directly across from the grandstands. It includes a traditional scoreboard with score, down-and-distance, time and quarter, timeouts remaining and field position. What makes the addition special and unique is the video screen that sits above it. The screen is roughly 10 yards wide with ‘Maryville Spoofhounds’ above it.

The theme of highlighting Maryville’s one-of-a-kind mascot continues onto the field where the midfield logo is the fighting Spoofhound logo, spanning 12 yards wide and taking up the whole space between the hashes.

“Seeing those renderings come to fruition,” Webb said. “Seeing them come to life. You see something 2-dimensional and all of a sudden, you get to see it in the real world.”

The video board will be a revenue generator for the athletic department and school with advertising able to go on it during games.

It will also provide students with hands-on experience operating it.

“It is a whole new level,” Webb said. “The training that I’ve been in on with that and working with Donovan Harris, down in the tech school, and what he will be able to do with our multimedia class with students is real-world learning.

“… Having all this data for our students to be able to turn them loose and let’s go. That is exciting.”

Underneath the logo and hashes on the home side of the word ‘Spoofhounds’ stretches from one 20-yardline to the other. The end zones are yellow and Maryville will be written in each with green letters.

At the entrance to the stadium, the Spoofhounds are adding a ‘Legacy Wall’ which will include sponsorships and be built out of brick and rod iron.

“The sponsorships and support that we’ve had from our community on that video board and the legacy wall has been — I’ve been awestruck,” Webb said. “But certainly not surprised. The Maryville community certainly supports young people. Our school district does something first class when we do something and that is certainly coming into picture now. That part is very exciting.”

The hand railings in the stands are also being extended for fans’ safety and convenience.

In addition to football, the field will host soccer games for both boys and girls in their respective fall and spring seasons.

“There is only one factor that will keep us off those fields and that is lightning,” Webb said. “The access to be able to provide for all of our student athletes. … For an activities director standpoint, our band this week was displaced because of the parking lot (construction). They couldn’t march where they really wanted to. To realize that they will be out there marching every day at 7 a.m. and be able to access it and not have a safety issue.”

The field is set to be ready by the second week of fall practice on Aug. 19 with the band, football and soccer teams getting to use it.

“The thing that I am most impressed with is the efficiency, the professionalism, the communication — you can tell when you’ve hired a good quality company to do something,” Webb said. “They have explained steps very well all the way through it.

“… It is a science. It is definitely a skilled-labor job and they do a great job. Just very impressed with the professionalism of all of it and I feel good about the companies that we’ve invested so much in.”

The baseball and softball field has been getting prepared to have the turf added along with a new backstop.

The baseball and softball field is scheduled to be completed by Sept. 9.

The first home football game is Sept. 6 against Pleasant Hill. The first home boys soccer game is Sept. 17 against Chillicothe. The first softball home game on the new field is set for Sept. 12 against Lafayette.