Wichita's Holy War Is Headed to the Ballpark, and the KCAC Should Follow
One of Kansas’ great high school football rivalries will hit the diamond as the 60th Holy War between Bishop Carroll and Kapaun Mt. Carmel will take place at Wichita’s Riverfront Stadium, home of the AA Wichita Wind Surge.
This is the ballpark’s second football game as Riverfront Stadium hosted the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference football championship game last season. Like Worcester’s Polar Park, it appears that Riverfront Stadium has found its stride in hosting lower-division college and high school football games.
With this in mind, the Wind Surge and the city of Wichita can direct their efforts toward an unlikely group, the NAIA’s Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference.
The KCAC is the second-oldest collegiate athletic conference, founded in 1890, with several of its current schools tracing its membership back to the early 1900s. In fact, Kansas State used to be a member of this storied conference. Several of the conference’s schools have a history of playing football in past Wichita ballparks.
Six KCAC schools (Baker, Bethany, Friends, Ottawa, Southwestern, and Sterling) played Wichita State in the city’s unique Island Park from 1912 to 1927. Sterling (then known as Cooper College) also played in one of college football’s first night games and the first west of the Mississippi River at Association Park in 1905 against Wichita State (then known as Fairmount College).
A trip to Wichita would be very manageable for several of the conference’s fanbases and give them a unique game day experience, bringing back memories of yesteryear.
Wichita’s Island Park (Photo Courtesy: BaseballHistoryComesAlive.com)
The NAIA hardly has any bowl game-like experiences with there being hardly any neutral-site games due to the small enrollments of many of their schools. For this reason, it may be a tough sell for the Wind Surge to host a football game at their ballpark. In the KCAC alone, eight of the eleven football-playing schools have enrollments of less than 1100 students.
However, a counterpoint to this is the Cortaca Jug’s success at MetLife Stadium. Ithaca and SUNY-Cortland’s game at MetLife drew 45,161 fans, a record for a Division III game. The game was so successful, the rivalry will take place at Yankee Stadium this season. Maybe fans could show up to Riverfront Stadium in droves for a “once-in-a-lifetime” game and force a “Riverfront Classic” to be a yearly affair.
While Wichita’s Holy War may not be even a blip on the national sporting radar, the KCAC should have their finger on the pulse of this event for several reasons. NAIA fans deserve showcase games like this and Wichita’s Riverfront Stadium provides a great opportunity for one.