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What is highly probable the oldest active field in the Wyoming Valley, Hanover Area Memorial Stadium may be dormant this fall for the first time since opening in 1924.
				After voting last week 5-3 to suspend school athletics, the Hanover Area School Board will meet again today to decide the fate of fall sports and whether Memorial Stadium will remain padlocked ending 96 years of continuous play. 
				Prior to the construction of Hanover Township High School, now Memorial Elementary School, which opened in 1922, the school&rsquo;s baseball and football teams played on Franklin Field, which was located behind Ripple&rsquo;s Pizza on Fellows Avenue in Breslau.
				&ldquo;Showing an active interest in its football team, Hanover Township High School students have cleared Franklin Field and erected goal posts. The gridiron will be marked out before Saturday afternoon. There is great enthusiasm at Hanover over the team,&rdquo; reported the Evening News on Oct. 7, 1920.
				Before the Wyoming Valley Athletic Conference was formed to organize and schedule athletic games, schools challenged other schools with advertisements in the Wilkes-Barre Record and the Evening News in the early 1900s.
				After the township high school opened, crews began work behind the school building for an athletic field to host baseball and gridiron games. The land was owned by the Glen Alden Coal Company and leased to the school district for $1 per year.
				&ldquo;Plans for an athletic field in the rear of the newly finished Hanover Township High School building at St. Mary&rsquo;s Crossroad, which will be equal of any athletic field in Wilkes-Barre and vicinity, are being prepared by Ralph M. Herr, architect, of this city. The dimensions of the field will be 300 by 500 feet. Bleachers with a seating capacity of about 2,500 persons will be erected. The field will be equipped with a circular cinder running track, baseball diamond and football field,&rdquo; the Wilkes-Barre Record reported July 1, 1923.
				Horses were used to haul in back fill and bulldozers leveled the playing field. Workers were paid $.25 cents per day while bulldozer operators were paid $.50 cents per day.
				&ldquo;Although there are twenty teams of horses and thirty men on the job of preparing the athletic stadium, the thing may not be completed until the first part of November when it is expected that several football games will be played there,&rdquo; reported the Wilkes-Barre Record.
				A chain link and wooden fence surrounded Memorial Stadium, named to honor those killed during World War I, when it opened in 1924.
				First game on Memorial Field was against Edwardsville High School with a Hanover win 20-13, according to the Evening News Sept. 22, 1924.
				As spectators paid $.5 cents to enter the field, other spectators watched from behind the fence during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
				By 1934, school officials planned to redesign Memorial Stadium.
				&ldquo;Hanover Township will formally dedicate its new $108,000 school athletic stadium on Saturday afternoon and has chosen St. John&rsquo;s High School varsity football team as the opening attraction in the new playing field,&rdquo; reported the Pittston Gazette newspaper on Sept. 19, 1940.
				A brick wall 14 feet high surrounded the field, bleachers were erected, restrooms with running water, a sprinkler system was added along with resurfacing the playing field with soil and Kentucky Blue Grass. The high brick wall prevented spectators from watching the game without paying.
				&ldquo;Hanover Township&rsquo;s stadium, seating 5,800, and started in July 1937, is recognized as one of the finest in the country and is said to be one of the largest in the state. It covers about two acres of ground in the rear of the Memorial High School and is entirely surrounded by a 14-foot faced brick wall,&rdquo; the Gazette reported.
				Four years after the renovated Memorial Stadium opened, the 1944 Hanover football team won the Eastern Conference championship on the field by defeating Lansford 7-0. Based on a point system, Hanover was named the state champions in December 1944.
				An electronic scoreboard was added onto a wall 14-feet high behind the school in September 1948.
				&ldquo;The new scoreboard is designed to keep spectators posted on every phase of the contest,&rdquo; the Times Leader reported Sept. 16, 1948.
				Following the death of running back Joseph Gayewski from a head injury suffered against Newport Township on Nov. 5, 1949, an effort to rename the field after the deceased player failed as school officials wanted to maintain the honor after World War I veterans.
				Officials instead named the scoreboard after Gayewski, an honor that continues today.
				A lightening strike during the Oct. 13, 1978, game against Wyoming Area knocked out a power transformer, ending gridiron contests under the lights for 25 years until 2003.
				Over time, the wall behind the school began to tip toward the field and was held up by railroad ties for two years. The scoreboard was removed from the tipping wall.
				In 1988, the locker rooms were renovated, a new press box was constructed and a new scoreboard was attached to the school.

Look Back: Hanover Area football field opened in 1924