French Field has been Fossil Ridge High School’s home field since the school opened in 2004, sharing it with neighboring Poudre High School, Rocky Mountain High School, and Fort Collins High School. Although FRHS student attendance is high for the home football games, would attendance and spirit be higher if the games were actually held on a FRHS home field?

The majority of the student population agrees that they would be more likely to attend more games if FRHS utilized its football field. “We already have a lot of dedicated fans at our home games at French Field but there would be a lot more if our games were actually held at Fossil,” said junior Charlie Borngrebe.

One of the biggest issues with French Field is its distance from FRHS. Student’s without a ride or their own car and driver’s license struggle to make it to games because they have no transportation to or from the field which is about a 20 minute drive from FRHS. Sophomore Macie Linne said, “If it was at Fossil, more students would come [to games] because it’s so much closer and easier to find rides for students who don’t drive.” Sophomore Taylor Cox doesn’t attend football games because of transportation issues and said if the games were at FRHS, “I would definitely go because [FRHS] is closer to where I live.”

Principal Will Allen shed some light on why FRHS doesn’t utilize its current football field which is equipped with an electronic score board and stadium lights. “The stands would have to be larger,” said Mr. Allen when comparing the FRHS facility with French Field.  “The other thing is there would have to be bathroom facilities which we don’t currently have besides the portable restrooms. The other thing [French Field] has are concessions and they would have to add a ticket booth to both sides [of the stadium].” In regards to space, Mr. Allen believes that FRHS has roughly the same amount of space to work with that French Field has so these additions would be possible.

“Ultimately, the thing is whether the district has the funds to make that happen,” said Mr. Allen. “We’re talking about a significant amount of money that would have to be infused into our program to make that work. I’m talking about millions of dollars.”

Mr. Allen’s other concerns with upgrading the FRHS current field is the invasive process the space would have to go through to add to the facilities, “To add the plumbing and stuff like that, they would have to tear up a lot of dirt, tear up a lot of ground, and possibly existing concrete.”

The decision does not lie within Poudre School District administrators, “In order to move in that direction, they would have to ask the voters [of Fort Collins],” said Mr. Allen.

In regards to potential future plans to utilize the field, Mr. Allen said, “I know there has been discussion in the past and now that we have a new superintendent, she might want to make that a point of discussion as well but I think realistically, there are a lot of factors that they are going to have to look at as to whether they could even consider [upgrading the field] as an option.”

If the field was to be made usable for football games against other schools, Mr. Allen said there would be potential that the field would be shared with another school within the district like French Field is. He mentioned that French Field may be shared between Rocky Mountain and Poudre High School while the new field would be shared with Fort Collins High School.