Alice ISD Cuts the Ribbon on Its $38 Million Memorial Stadium
The 6,000-seat stadium replaced the nearly 80-year-old Skydome on the same site. The district plans graduations and student events there as well as football.
Alice has its stadium back. Alice ISD held a community ribbon cutting Monday, Nov. 2, for its new $38 million Memorial Stadium, a 6,000-seat home for the Coyotes built on the same ground as the old one, KIII News reported.
The stadium has already hosted football games this season. Monday's ceremony was a chance to stop and recognize what the community had invested. The district called the event "The Alice Experience: Where Coyote Traditions Live On."
Replacing the Skydome
The new stadium replaced the old Memorial Stadium, which was nearly 80 years old and known around town as the Skydome, according to KIII. While crews worked, the Coyotes played their 2025 home games at nearby San Diego High School.
Superintendent Dr. Anysia Trevino told the station the new stadium belongs to the people of Alice. "It's really gratifying because we're able to share it with the community," she said. "It is completely for them."
She also said the building tells students something about how their town sees them. "It's just going to rejuvenate them to know that the community invested in them," Trevino said.
The Jim Wells County Courthouse in Alice, photographed in 2008. This photo is for illustration and does not show the stadium. Photo: Larry D. Moore / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
What students said
Freshman cheerleader Alana Serna said the ceremony was "a big honor just to Alice and to represent our Coyote pride." She told KIII that cheering in a stadium that size can feel intimidating at first, but the lights, the bleachers and the crowd soon take over.
Senior Matthew Caanen, Alice High School's head drum major and FFA president, said the night belonged to the town. "You know, it was us. It wasn't anyone else. It's Alice," he said.
Caanen said that looking up at the band from the track for the first time made the group feel bigger. "We feel like we mean something. We're a unit," he said. He told the station the new facility gives students confidence and pushes the band to play louder.
He also made sure to honor the old stadium. "Everyone loved our old stadium. We're not saying that we didn't, but being able to graduate in this new stadium, in the new Memorial Stadium, it's just, it feels special," he said.
More than Friday nights
The district plans to use Memorial Stadium for more than football, KIII reported. The plans include graduations, Little Olympics and events for the band, cheerleaders, Strutters, JROTC and other student groups.
"We can't wait to have graduation here, Little Olympics, because this stadium is for everyone," Trevino said.
For more small-town Texas community news, read about Nacogdoches' late-October lineup and how Del Rio got its name.
Our view
A town stadium is more than concrete and lights. It is where families gather on Friday nights, where a band learns to march as one, and where seniors cross a stage with their parents watching from the stands. Alice spent real money on this place, and the people who paid for it deserve to see it used well and kept up for the next 80 years.
The best part of Monday's story is that students saw the stadium as a gift from their neighbors. That is worth teaching. Gratitude and pride in your hometown are good things, and a community that invests in its children usually gets that investment back many times over.
