Home Sweet Home
Leader photo by Matt Belinson
Lincoln Prep’s new football field is finished, and the Panthers will play official home games this fall after three years on the road.
Photo courtesy of Lincoln Prep
An aerial view shows the entire scale of Lincoln Prep’s new football field, as surrounding construction continues on the new campus in Grambling.
GRAMBLING — The Lincoln Prep football team will return to a home field this fall.
After playing without its own athletic facilities for three seasons, Lincoln Prep has finished its new football field and will play games on it by the start of the 2023 season, according to Lincoln Prep executive director Gordan Ford.
“The football field is complete,” Ford told the Leader during a tour at the new field Monday afternoon. “We are going to play on it this season.”
The field itself is finished, while lights will be going in this summer and the track lining the field still needs to be completed.
Ford said the new field is made of Rootzone 3D series Astro turf, with an organic, pine-based layer, rather than the black rubber usually used in turf that can be hot to the touch during the summer.
Grandstands will line the sideline between the track and sidewalk coming from the school, but Ford said bleachers are delayed and potential options for seating are in play for the fall.
The plan is to start with seating for 750 fans.
“The only hold up right now is the bleachers are delayed, so we’re working on probably going to have either rented or temporary bleachers,” Ford said.
Behind the south endzone, a future field house will be put in as the permanent locker room for the Panthers.
Until that point, Ford said Lincoln Prep’s locker room will be in a largescale vocational training classroom.
Close by the main turf field is a new all-grass practice field, a space that will primarily serve as a space for band practice, but Ford did say it can be used for alternative football practices if coaches so choose.
Does the stadium have a name?
Ford said Lincoln Prep is working with a potential naming rights partner for the football field but was not ready to get into specifics.
Before the life of displacement, Lincoln Prep played at Eddie G. Robinson Memorial Stadium at Grambling State University until a new ruling in a decades-old federal desegregation lawsuit forced the school to remove itself from the GSU campus.
Lincoln Prep has gone a combined 10-13 over the last two seasons.
Now, the Panthers have a place to call their own and will truly take the field as the home squad this fall.
