While many students may not be thinking of the 2020-21 football season just yet, planning has been underway for Trentini Stadium to be renovated and everything that will be affected by these renovations.

While these renovations are underway, all home games for all athletics that use the stadium will have to be relocated to other locations in Wake Forest.

“Right now, the tentative plan is to play all our varsity football games at Heritage and play as many JV games as we can there. There could be a chance we have to play a few more away JV games, and we’re going to have access to Wake Forest Middle School’s football field which has a track and does have lights,” Athletic Director Michael Joyner said. “Right now the plan is to play all of our spring sports, men and women’s lacrosse and soccer at Wake Forest Middle School. The one thing we don’t have a solution for right now is the where the track team will practice.”

The Wake County school system is overseeing the project and has a plan for what will be included in the renovations.

“There have been a lot of issues with the stands in the last six years I’ve been here, there’s been some crumbling on parts of them and there were some areas where the actual bleachers were starting to pull away from the concrete, so it was just determined that it wasn’t an adequate solution to come and repair them. It was better to come in and replace everything,” Joyner said.

While the stadium won’t be open for next year, the plan is to have the stadium open in time for the home football games at the start of the 2021-22 season.

“Although, they have told us to expect some delays because of all different circumstances, so we’ll deal with that as it comes,” Joyner said.

Track and field coach Patrick Marshall has his own hopes of what he wants to see done in the renovations.

“On the track I’d love to have a full eight lane track, improve the high jump pit because the rubber in the high jump pit is the original rubber from when they first rubberised it. It didn’t get redone when they redid the track,” Marshall said. “We’d like to have a new discus cage installed instead of our old one that we’ve been using, better drainage would be nice so when it rains, it doesn’t all drain onto the field, and it’d be nice if they could fix how the track lined up with the field.”

When it comes to being affected by the renovations, Marshall believes the track team will bear the brunt.

“I think we’re going to be the most affected because we need to find a track that we can practice on. It’s not as much the running part; it’s more the field events. We need a place to throw shot put and discus safely, and we need a place to do long jump, triple jump and high jump safely, so we’re going to figure out some way to put that in another location on campus or find another place where we can go and do that,” Marshall said.

While some may worry about losing the uniqueness of Trentini Stadium, Joyner thinks the stadium will be safe from any changes to its legacy.

Joyner said, “I don’t really see the tradition changing here: the press box is going to be the same, the track’s going to be located in the same area, the field is going to be located in the same are. You know old college stadiums get renovated all the time, but it doesn’t really change the aura of, you know, you’re coming to Wake Forest High School, and you have to play against Wake Forest High School in Trentini Stadium. So hopefully, all of that will stay the same, and there’s still the history there. You’re still going to have the signage that shows how many conference championships we’ve won by teams that have used the stadium, but renovations happen all the time in older places, and you still keep the same aura.”