For the last 75 years, Mountaineer Bowl has served as Western’s largest venue and the Gunnison Country’s meeting place. As we prepare to celebrate the grand opening of the Rady Family Sports Complex, where a newly renovated Mountaineer Bowl is ready to host community events for the next 75 years, we look back at the history of our beloved football field. It’s our chance to reminisce on the Bowl’s setting perched above the town, the cheap seats in the sage, and a notable lack of locker rooms that showed the visiting teams what it meant to be Gunnison-tough.
The Western State College community celebrated the grand opening of the Mountaineer Bowl during Homecoming 1948. The stadium, sitting at an elevation of 7,723 feet, was the brainchild of President Mickelson and was shaped to the contours of Smelter Hill north of the Western campus. The Homecoming crowd was thrilled as Western throttled the Colorado School of Mines Orediggers 20 – 0, with Chuck Hitchcock scoring the Bowl’s first-ever touchdown on a two-yard plunge.
The Glory Days: 1970s Football Dominance
The 1970s marked WSC football’s most glorious decade to date. In nine of those seasons, Bill Noxon guided the Mountaineers to 69 victories, eight conference championships, and four national playoff games. The Mountaineer Bowl was the playground for exciting offensive stars like Charlie Thompson, Mike Makings, Jim Arcieri, and Tyron James. They operated behind superb offensive lines led by all-time greats Mike O’Rourke, Justin Cross, Carl Mikesell, and Al Borkowski. There were also great, tenacious defenders, with Billy Campbell, Aubrey Tate, Gaar Potter, Joe Krutulis, Howard Fry, and Jay Chapman among the best. Noxon compiled one of the most outstanding coaching records in the nation and proved that his success was
sustainable as he led his team through more than two complete graduation cycles.
As the world’s highest collegiate football stadium, the Bowl has been home to 20 Mountaineer teams that won the RMAC Championship and three national playoff games. It was also the site of two stunning Mountaineer upsets of #1 ranked opponents in 1966 and 1996 (both by the score of 14-13). The brilliant Western coaches who led Mountaineer gridders to championships were Pete Pederson, Kay Dalton, Ollie Woods, Bill Noxon, Duke Iverson, and Jas Bains. Additionally, the Bowl was the home field of the Gunnison Cowboys football team for more than 50 years. As such, it hosted a Class A State championship game in 1956, as well as several Cowboys State Playoff games through the years.
Beyond Football: A Track & Field Powerhouse
But the football team was not the only team to find success in the Bowl. In the 197Os, Western history professor Duane Vandenbusche started coaching both the Mountaineers’ Track and Field and Cross-Country teams, turning moribund programs into national powerhouses. Over the years, Mountaineer Bowl hosted several RMAC Track and Field Championship meets, where Vandenbusche’s Big Red Machine showcased brilliant performances by many Mountaineers, with All-RMAC and NCAA Division II All-Americans and National Champions among them. In the early 2000s, Mountaineer All-American and Steeplechase National Champion Jen Michel took the controls of the Big Red Machine, and it rolled on without missing a beat. Through this period, Mountaineer Bowl has been the track and field home of Gunnison High School and has regularly held an annual track meet for high schools from Colorado’s Western Slope and beyond.
A Community Gathering Place
The Bowl, however, wasn’t just a place to hold or watch sporting events. It often played host to events beyond the confines of the University or the town, such as the Gunnison Rotary Club’s annual spectacular Fourth of July fireworks show. Rotary staged that show for decades until the installation of an artificial track made holding the fireworks show untenable. The Bowl’s ceremonial importance to Western, as well as the Gunnison Country, is illustrated in the fact that the Celebration of Life ceremony for Mountaineer Sports Hall of Famers Tracy Borah and Duke Iverson (both were revered as icons in Gunnison as well as at Western) demanded a venue with Mountaineer Bowl’s capacity.
Finally, the Bowl serves as a fitting setting for Western Colorado University’s (neé Western State College of Colorado) Commencement ceremonies, providing the perfect backdrop for those dignified rites. It is here that the Bowl steps forward as Western’s “front porch.” And it is from the Bowl that graduates throughout the years have launched adult lives and careers.
Sadly, though, in recent years, the Bowl languished in that role due to a dearth of suitable, even safe, buildings and facilities. Realizing the iconic stadium did not reflect the level of achievement that fit the university’s aims, Interim President Nancy Chisholm vigorously pushed for a project to renovate and transform the Bowl for a new generation. In 2021, she and Athletics Director Miles Van Hee started down the road to renovation. Marshaling a monumental contribution from benefactors Paul and Katie Rady, along with generous and vital donations from Jeff and Karen Holway, Don and Michelle Jackson, Michael O. Johnson, Rob and Vicki Wheeler, and Tim Berquist (all Western alumni), among many others, Chisholm and Van Hee were able to make the remodeling and renovation of Mountaineer Bowl a reality.
A New Era with the Rady Family Sports Complex
Now nearly completed, the Mountaineer Bowl Events Complex project addressed the original Bowl’s shortcomings. The project included improvements to the press box, ticket booth, and concession stand but also included the installation of an artificial turf playing surface, a new all-weather track, and stadium lights, allowing Western to host its first-ever night game during the 24-25 season. And what of those Gunnison-tough locker rooms, you ask? Those have been replaced with state-of-the-art locker rooms for both the home and visiting teams, facilities for game officials, and separate locker rooms for the soccer team. The project even added a much-needed renovation of the football squad’s locker room in Paul Wright Gymnasium. It is a truly spectacular development, and the Mountaineer Bowl at the Rady Family Sports Complex emerges as one of the finest facilities of its kind in the nation. In President Chisholm’s words, the Rady Family Sports Complex will become “a highly visible pillar of our campus … a gateway for the community.”
Finally, Western’s “Front Porch” matches its majesty.
Author: John Randall
