Fairfield Stadium

Fairfield Stadium was a stadium in Huntington, West Virginia. It was primarily used for football, and was the home field of the Marshall University football team between 1927 and 1990, prior to the opening of Joan C. Edwards Stadium.HistoryThe original stadium was a red brick structure that featured a grass field circled by a cinder track and was owned by the city and mostly maintained by community volunteers.In 1970, a major renovation project was completed that expanded the seating capacity by 5,000 seats. An artificial grass playing surface was installed, and the playing surface was lowered. Along with that, a new press box and locker room for the home team was constructed. The 1970 season ended with the crash of Southern Airways Flight 932 on November 14, which killed all 75 people aboard, including 37 players and six coaches.The stadium fell into disrepair in the 1970s and 80s. In 1984 the original 1927 east side was torn down, after being found unsafe, and was replaced by temporary aluminum bleachers.For the 1991 season, visiting teams were forced to dress at Fairfield and then ride the team bus more than a mile to and from the new stadium for the game. This is because the Shewey Athletic Center, which houses Joan C. Edwards Stadium's locker rooms, were not completed. (Marshall used facilities in the Cam Henderson Center near the new stadium). MU soccer, which had played there from the program's founding continued to use the field until 1993 when it too moved to Joan C. Edwards Stadium. Today that program has its own soccer specific stadium, the Veterans Memorial Soccer Complex, on the site of the former Veterans Memorial Fieldhouse.