For TSU, there’s no place like home at Third Ward stadium
Bringing the Texas Southern University Homecoming game back to Durley Stadium meant so many things.
For senior Marcus Nash, president of the university’s Student Government Association, the game was a yearlong quest to leave a legacy.
For alumna and former cheerleading captain Davette Wiltz (Class of 1985), standing again on the sideline with her fellow cheerleading alumni brought her back in time.
For Kevin Granger (Class of 1996), vice president of intercollegiate athletics and a former basketball standout for the school, seeing the filled stadium was a gratifying and humbling experience.
This year’s homecoming was the first home game to be played at the historically black university’s stadium in 11 seasons. The winless Tigers fell to the Missouri S&T Miners 23-20.
The team has played at BBVA Compass Stadium downtown for five seasons and, at one point, played in the Astrodome and other Houston-area stadiums. But it hits differently when it’s back on
the campus of the second largest HBCU in the country, adjacent to Tiger Walk, with a view of the Houston skyline.
Last year, the Student Government Association passed a resolution to allocate funds to make enhancements to Durley Stadium, an effort to have the team play at least one game on campus, but a long-term goal is to eventually play all home games there.
It’s also about leaving a legacy, Nash said.
“It was our vision to drive student engagement with the alumni coming,” said DiCarlo Warren, SGA Senate chair. “For the alumni to come home and have the game in their backyard rather than go downtown and worry about getting towed or parking; (having the game here is saying) ‘You at home; come home.’ ”
Stadium enhancements include new fencing, a new scoreboard, the Tiger logo at the 50yard line and additions made to the home stands and student section. Temporary mobile presidential suites were placed near the scoreboard for the school’s VIPs.
“It’s everything: pride, community, love, fellowship, family. This is how it should be,” said Monique Hayes, a member of the Delta Gamma chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, who graduated in 1987.
Hayes remembers growing up going to games at Durley Stadium with her alumni parents, Maxine and John Elliott Westbury, and listening to the sounds of the Ocean of Soul marching band and watching the dancers known as the Motion of the Ocean. The band is one of two black collegiate marching bands in the state — the other is Prairie View A&M’s Marching Storm — and marches in a highknee stepping style.
The Ocean of Soul band celebrated its 50th anniversary during halftime with a nod to NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, which celebrated its own half-century mark earlier this year.
“That was the year that Dr. Benjamin Butler III stepped on the TSU field to boldly go where no man had gone before,” the announcer said about the band director who was hired by the university in July 1969, according the band’s alumni association.
The halftime performance, which started with the naming of the Homecoming Court, went over its allotted time, but no one seemed to mind much. The show incorporated four generations of band members, drum majors, dancers and flag corps flawlessly into a 20-minute show.
“Bringing it home is what we always wanted, but it was hard to envision what that would be like,” said Wiltz, who was cheerleading captain from 1980-83 when the team first became co-ed. “To see the stands this full is super exciting.”
Wiltz said that it can been hard to drum up strong school spirit and participation in a city of Houston’s size simply because there is so much to do on a Saturday afternoon. But Saturday’s flurry of activity put a big smile on her face.
“When I see this, I say that we can do it too and do it better,” she said.
After a history-making year for the 92-year-old university (hosting a Democratic presidential debate in September and being featured as part of BET’s HBCU documentary series), the administration is happy to showcase to the world that TSU is proud of its Third Ward home.
“The theme this year is ‘Back on the Yard, No Place Like Home,’ ” said Teresa McKinney, vice president of student services. “There are so many legacies here — parents, grandparents and now (current students) — we’re truly multigenerational. The students just felt a strong affinity for the school and wanted to experience their homecoming here, on campus, near the Tiger Walk and where their classes are. There’s a level of pride and joy here that is not at other institutions.”