The old, THE NEW
New FHS field scoreboard, almost $200,000, should be ready for home opener Aug. 31
A new scoreboard “roughly 40 feet wide that comes out to a little over 40 feet tall” costing almost $200,000, pursued by Farragut High School football boosters for about three years, is expected to be installed and ready to operate at Bill Clabo Field for the Admirals’ home opener Thursday, Aug. 31, versus Morristown West.
That’s according to Eddie Courtney, FHS varsity football head coach.
Featuring a video screen roughly 27 feet wide and 17 feet tall, “We feel like this is pretty special,” Courtney said about the scoreboard. “Friday night football here has always been exciting with the cheerleaders and the dance team and the band and the football team.
“Now we’ll be able to add to it,” using the video screen for “special recognitions between quarters or halftime or before or after games. … Put kids’ faces up there when they do something,” he added. “Anything in the community that needs to be relayed, we can do that. It’s unlimited having stuff we can do with it.”
The “Farragut Admirals” lettering with the program’s star logo, on a specially curved truss above the scoreboard, “That’ll all have LED lights to add to it,” Courtney said.
“We’ve been at it three years trying to get enough money to do this,” Courtney added. “… You have to go back over three years ago when Paul Glintencamp was [booster club] president right on to everyone since then. We wanted to make sure we got enough money to do it right. We wanted to make sure we got it large enough to be seen in our stadium.
“We got exactly what we wanted.”
As for who decided the exact scoreboard features and style, “I was one along with about three other people in the booster club,” Courtney said.
Electro-Mech, a company “out of Georgia” that built the scoreboard, will deliver and install it. “Our deadline right now is get it done that Wednesday [Aug. 30] before the first home game,” Courtney said. “They’ll start [this week] taking down the old scoreboard and setting the new posts and going ahead and running all the attachments.”
As for how to acknowledge last season’s Class 5A state championship in relation to the new scoreboard, Courtney said, “After the thing is up and running we’ll do something, figure out where the best place to do that would be.”
Knox County Board of Education approval a few weeks ago was the final hurdle.
“We had money on hand in our account. … And we had all the inspections and building codes and everything taken care of and all our paperwork in line,” Courtney said.
