Gery Gehrmann remembers the first game at McKenzie Stadium.
But Gehrmann also remembers where Evergreen High School played football before McKenzie opened a half century ago.
That field stunk.
“I remember this,” Gehrmann recalled about Evergreen’s old field, which was located where Cascade Middle School sits today. “The guy that was the head of maintenance of the fields and stuff fertilized that field with chicken manure or cow manure. And when the field got wet, it smelled.”
Those issues all went away on Sept. 27, 1974, when McKenzie Stadium hosted its first high school football as the Plainsmen host Columbia River.
Fifty years later, McKenzie Stadium remains a showcase for high school football in Southwest Washington and the site of countless memories.
It started that first night, when Columbia River came away with a 22-13 victory on that first night.
“But you don’t have to go too much into that,” quipped Gehrmann, who was Evergreen’s head coach from 1969-1976 and later worked as an assistant under Chuck Hawthorne at Mountain View.
When McKenzie opened in 1974, it had a state-of-the-art grass field that featured three miles of sub-surface draining tubes. That meant the field had no crown on it.
“It was the time I had ever been on a grass field that was flat,” said former Evergreen and Camas head coach Jon Eagle, who first played at McKenzie as a sophomore quarterback for Columbia River in 1975.
Gehrmann said the Portland Thunder of the short-lived World Football League held practices in the early days of McKenzie Stadium.
“They had guys from all over the United States on that team, and they said they had never played on a better grass field than what we had,” Gehrmann said.
On Nov. 8, 1974, the stadium was formally dedicated as K.W. McKenzie Stadium for the former dairyman who served on the Evergreen School Board for more than 20 years.
The original stadium was uncovered with seating on the south side for about 3,000 and small bleacher on the north side for another 800. Players had to use the locker rooms inside Evergreen High School, then walk down to the playing field.
The stadium was expanded in 1982 to include a roof on the south grandstand and added the current north grandstand with locker rooms underneath, expanding capacity of the stadium to almost 6,000.
Eagle at Evergreen
When Eagle became the head coach at Evergreen in 1988 at the age of 29, he had the idea of leading his team on a path through the grove of trees on the east side of the stadium and up the hill so the players could enter the stadium through the aisles of the south grandstand, like the players did back in the 1970s.
“We had a really big team, a lot of 300-pound dudes,” Eagles said. “So we go up that path through the forest … and these big guys were exhausted. They said ‘Coach, don’t ever do that again.’ ”
Another bad idea, Eagle said, was when he allowed his players to draw a large E in chalk on the field before a rivalry game against Mountain View in 1994.
“They came to me and asked ‘Coach, do you care if we make a big E in the field,” Eagle said. “And now, I would never say yes to something like that. But, you know, I was in my early 30s and it sounded like a good idea.
“So they made this enormous E. I mean it went almost from the numbers to the numbers (on the field). They must have used 40 bags of chalk. The district had to get the entire maintenance crew down there to clean the field.”
Ironically, two players on the 1994 Evergreen team are now head football coaches — Dan Chase at Seton Catholic and Clint LeCount at Hockinson.
With two high school teams playing at McKenzie after Mountain View High School opened in 1981, as well as middle school teams and other teams, the state-of-the-art field could not withstand the heavy use.
Late in the season, McKenzie’s field often turned into a quagmire.
In 1999, with Heritage High School opening, the decision to install an artificial turf field was made.
The high school coaches were asked to research which type of surface to install — AstroTurf and the newer Field Turf — and report back to the district.
“We (coaches) talked and we thought this Field Turf stuff is actually pretty good,” Eagle said. “So we came back to the district with our findings, and the AstroTurf rep was already sitting there. It’s like they’d already made their minds up. I liked to call it ‘the illusion of input.’ ”
Growing up at McKenzie
Cale Piland said he grew up watching games as a kid at the uncovered McKenzie grandstand.
“I remember as a kid, we used to have a cannon here,” Piland said. “It got lit off after every Evergreen or Mountain View touchdown. I think obviously the neighbors got a little tired of that.”
Piland started playing football games on the field in the 1980s as a middle schooler. From there, he played for Mountain View, became an assistant coach under Eagle at Evergreen from 1996-1999, succeeded Eagle as Evergreen’s head coach in 2001, leading the Plainsmen to the 4A state championship in 2004.
In 2007, he became the head coach at Union until 2014. He remains a frequent spectator on the sidelines as the athletic director for Evergreen Public Schools.
And with more than three decades as a player, coach and administrator, Piland found it hard to single out from a mountain of memories.
“The blocked field goal against Ferndale in the quarterfinals,” Piland said. “That was a big one.”
He was referring to Union’s 21-14 win over Ferndale in the 2008 3A state quarterfinals.
With the game tied 14-14 and 14 seconds to play, Union’s Dex Homer broke through to block a potential go-ahead field goal by Ferndale, and Mitch Saylor picked up the loose ball and ran 65 yards for the winning touchdown.
Dr. Pepper and burgers
Adam Mathieson, currently the head football coach at Camas, served as football coach and athletic director at Mountain View from 2008 to 2022.
A favorite McKenzie memory for him came from a 2011 regular-season finale against Columbia River that the Thunder needed to win to secure a playoff spot.
River took a 21-20 lead into halftime when a power outage hit, sending McKenzie Stadium into darkness.
“I’m not sure we were going to be able to stop their momentum,” Mathieson said. “And the minute I step onto the turf (for the second half), everything went black.”
The game was the second of a doubleheader at McKenzie, and when the power outage lasted 90 minutes the decision was made to postpone the game until noon the next day.
Mathieson and his assistant coaches did not go to bed that night.
“I sent the coaches to Wendy’s to grab 40 cheeseburgers and I went to the Safeway by Mountain View to get bunch of Dr. Pepper,” Mathieson said. “So we drank Dr. Pepper and ate cheeseburgers while watching game film.”
The all-night film session paid off as Chavo Camargo returned an interception for a touchdown for the Thunder, then Mountain View fended off a late River comeback to secure a 34-28 victory.
Semifinal showcase
McKenzie Stadium also served as a host site for state semifinal football games, with doubleheaders in 2016 and 2018, and a single game in 2019.
Eagle, Piland and Mathieson recalled the packed grandstands for the 4A state semifinal between Camas and Sumner in 2016. Eagle was coaching Camas, where he served as head coach from 2008-2020. He is now the head coach at West Linn in Oregon.
But Piland and Mathieson were merely spectators that day.
“Cale and I were working that game,” Mathieson said. “And you look around and you’re like ‘Man, this place, you know for a Saturday afternoon, is about as on fire as you can be for a high school football game.’ ”
Even 50 years after its first game, McKenzie Stadium remains as vibrant as ever, hosting football doubleheaders most every Friday night during the fall.
Piland would like to see more improvements at the facility. The Field Turf, eventually installed in 2012 to replace the old AstroTurf field, is reaching the end of its lifespan. And he’s also like to see a fieldhouse constructed on the west end of the stadium, similar to one built at Kiggins Bowl two years ago.
“I mean, you look at tonight,” Piland said during a recent doubleheader. “We’ve got two teams playing on the field, and we got two more teams just standing around waiting to get into the locker room for the late game.”
With several local teams off to impressive starts to the season, McKenzie Stadium could once again be the setting of great playoff action this November.
Maybe there will be another day like the one in 2016 between Camas and Sumner.
“I remember telling a photographer that day,” Eagle recalled, “ ‘Hey could you just take a picture of me here one time?’ So when I’m old and gray, I can look back and think ‘Oh hey, that was a pretty cool day.’ ”
