RIGONOMICS:

I could feel the electricity in the air as I walked onto the Estancia High School campus Friday morning.

An idea that started a dozen years ago was becoming a reality as the formal dedication of the Jim Scott Stadium was about to begin. I will steal a line from Board President Martha Flour’s dedication address: “The stadium was Jim Scott’s original idea, and he spent more than 12 years uniting and mobilizing the community… without Jim’s vision and dedication, the stadium may not have been built.”

Costa Mesa City Manager Allen Roeder recalled to me the conversations he had with Jim Scott Sr., 12 years earlier. Scott had a dream that both Costa Mesa high schools should have a field they can call home. Twelve years is a long time. Parents, whose children were in kindergarten when Jim Scott had this dream, will be sitting in these beautiful bleachers as their now young adults walk across the field in their cap and gowns this June. “This will be our first high school graduation in our own stadium,” said one of the graduating seniors.

You have to understand what this means to a community whose high schools never had a proper stadium. I know we are all part of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, but for the residents of Costa Mesa there has always been the feeling of being a second-class citizen because both Costa Mesa and Estancia High School played their home games at someone else’s stadium.

I talked to Bruce Garlich while standing on the state-of-the-art, all-weather track that looped around the vibrant green artificial turf field. Bruce, whose son graduated in ’78 from Estancia, told me, “You never really felt like you were ever playing a home game, you always felt like a guest on someone else’s field.” I could see a glint in his eye as he looked over the field with pride.

You could see the amazement in people’s eyes as they filled the bleachers or walked around the track. This is the kind of field that you only see when watching the NFL on Sunday. The quality of the facility, with its new locker rooms, snack bar and professional press box, was not something the people of Costa Mesa were expecting.

Many of the people who followed Jim’s dream and started Costa Mesa United to get a stadium and pool complex for our high schools no longer have any children in the district. People ask why someone without any school-age children would work so hard to get these facilities. The answer I get is simple. Someone did it for us before we came along. People we will never know built our schools, parks and playgrounds before we came. In a real community, people do it for the future; for people they will never know.

Not only is the stadium being used for football, soccer and track for both Costa Mesa and Estancia High School athletes; but now thanks to Steve Mensinger, president of Costa Mesa Pop Warner Football, an agreement has been struck with the district so that our young Mustang players will have it for their home games as well.

If you are reading this early in the morning, head over to Estancia and take a look at the facility. The inaugural event starts this morning with a 5K and 2K run. Registration starts at 7 a.m., the races start at 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., respectively. If you are like me and would rather not run, they start serving pancakes at 8 a.m. Proceeds will go to support both High School foundations.

When the dedication ended I asked a few of the Estancia football players, who proudly stood on the field sporting their jerseys, if any of the other schools they played had an artificial turf field? The question bounced around some of the players, and as they turned to me to answer you could actually see them standing taller as one of them replied, “No one in the league has anything like this.” Our kids and community deserve something this great. Thank you, Jim Scott, for your field of dreams.

JIM RIGHEIMER is a Costa Mesa planning commissioner, a local developer and a GOP activist.