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St. Joseph named new MSHSAA football championships host starting 2024
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Cape Central's Al Young runs the ball on a kick-off return from Webb City in the second quarter during the Class 4 state championship Saturday, Nov. 29, 2014 at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis.
Glenn Landberg
For the first time since 1995, the primary host site for the MSHSAA Show-Me Bowl, the series of high school football state championships, won’t be the Edward Jones Dome or Faurot Field.
Instead, the event has reportedly been scheduled to move to St. Joseph, Missouri, as soon as the 2024 season for some teams, moving to Missouri Western State’s Spratt Stadium.
The stadium has previously hosted 10 8-man title games, and will host the 2024 8-man title game while hosting all seven classes’ title games from the duration of the contract, 2025 to 2028.
The return to St. Joseph marks the first time Spratt Stadium will host a title game since the 2007 season.
"We appreciate the work the cities put into this bid process, and we have taken this process very seriously," MSHSAA Executive Director Dr. Jennifer Rukstad said in a Tuesday release.
“We have an obligation to our membership to find not only the best facilities to host our championships, but also the best support from the host site to serve our schools’ needs. We are very excited about the next five years for the Show-Me Bowl!”
Since 2016, nearly all state championship games had been hosted by the University of Missouri on Faurot Field at Memorial Stadium, while for the 20 years prior they’d almost exclusively taken place at the Edward Jones Dome.
Now, with St. Joseph having won the bidding race for hosting one of the top-drawing events in the state, it’s a time to celebrate for the town of city of more than 70,000 and host school Missouri Western State.
With a listed capacity of 10,000, Spratt Stadium is ready to enter its name into the fold with four years of hosting the best of the best in the Show Me State.
"We feel Spratt Stadium is one of the premier college venues in the state,” MWSU Director of Athletics Andy Carter said.
“For our university to be on display for the best of the best high school football teams across Missouri over these next few years is a win-win for everyone involved.”
Jackson would’ve played at Faurot Field twice, once in 2019 and again in 2020, had it not been for Covid-19’s role in moving the state championship game to Helias in its 2020 banner season.
Cape Central played at the Edward Jones Dome in 2014, losing a heartbreaker to Webb City, while Hayti hung a banner of its own at Faurot Field in 2018 with a 44-0 throttling of Lincoln in the Class 1 title game.
The drive from Sikeston, Missouri, to Spratt Stadium is nearly a seven-hour trip, nearly double that of the drive to Columbia’s Faurot Field and almost quadruple that of the trip to the Edward Jones Dome.
While it’s a farther drive for local squads, they’ll take it on the chin as the state organization prepares to transition into its new era on the Kansan border.
“We have been extremely fortunate to host a wide variety of high-profile events over the last several months,” Executive Director of the St. Joseph Sports Commission Brett Esely said.
“We cannot wait to welcome our state’s best high school football teams to an outstanding venue here in St. Joseph and Buchanan County.
“In conjunction with our partner Missouri Western State University, we look forward to delivering an outstanding championship experience for all involved!”