Just hearing the name “Lane Stadium” brings forth many wonderful memories. It’s hard to know where to start trying to recount the growth of the “Home of the Hokies” over the last 50 years. Can the Lane Stadium/Worsham Field Fiftieth Anniversary really be only three years away?
Perhaps a quick walk back in time would provide the context for what has become the showcase for Virginia Tech football and a nationally recognized venue.
1938 Virginia Tech campus map, showing the location of Miles Stadium (item #14)
Most of you know Pritchard, O’Shag, Lee, and Peddrew-Yates Halls. You may remember the “Pritchard Prairie” as a scene of countless volleyball games and Spring sunbathing. Life was good!
But older alumni remember that area as the site of Miles Stadium. Miles Stadium was our home football field for almost forty years – from 1926 through 1964. It held 17,000 (sometimes) avid (sometimes) Hokies, but our crowds back then pale in comparison to today’s “Enter Sandman” crowd. The total student body back then was only about the size of the Class of 2012.
Tech’s strong home field reputation began in Miles Stadium. In those years at Miles, the Hokies only played 95 home games but won 71% of them. You can see from the limited number of home games over 40 years, Tech was on the wrong side of a lot of “2 for 1″ contracts.
The day Tech defeated then 10th ranked Florida State 20-11 is still a clear memory. Fred Biletnikoff, now a NFL Hall of Famer, spiked the ball in extreme frustration when he scored a FSU touchdown late in the game. Until that lone touchdown, the Hokies totally controlled FSU. Not surprisingly, the defense set the tone for the day on FSU’s first drive, which ended with only a field goal.
But over time, VPI was becoming Virginia Tech. New students were arriving, new curricula and degree programs were being added, participation in the Corps of Cadets was no longer mandatory and, heaven forbid, women were arriving at Tech.
The need for a new football venue was necessary, because Miles Stadium was a prime building site needed for student housing. A new location, almost to Christiansburg it seemed, was selected. The future “Home of the Hokies” was born.
In the Spring of 1964 Lane Stadium construction began. The original design was two bowed structures with ten (10) sections on each side. Lane Stadium, Indiana University’s Memorial Stadium and Groves Stadium at Wake Forest all had the same design. Even today Groves Stadium is often referred to as “Little Lane.”
Virginia Tech’s Lane Stadium under construction, showing the West side stands, circa 1964/65.
The West Side with the original press box was built first along with the center section of the East Side. Students sat in bleachers on the East Side.
Student tickets in those days were “first come, first served” except for the section reserved for the Corps of Cadets. A good seat required early arrival unlike the “fashionably late” student arrival of today.
The 1965 season, our first season in Lane Stadium, produced a 7-3 record, but was not a particularly notable home schedule with only three home games — William & Mary, Villanova and UVa. Obviously all eyes were on the game with the Wahoos on October 23, 1965. My recollection, while becoming fuzzier with each passing year, is that it had been rainy the night before – umbrellas (yes, you could bring one into the game) were stuck upright in the mud under our seats.
The game took on extra significance because it was Dedication Day for Lane Stadium. Half finished, Lane was already better than old Scott Stadium. ‘Hoo grads scurried out of the woodwork to Blacksburg. They came to see the new stadium, but carried a sure knowledge that the Mighty ‘Hoos would spoil the Dedication. UVa’s traditional loss to Duke had been accomplished earlier in the season, but they had somehow managed to defeat UNC-CH. The ‘Hoos descended with confidence on Blacksburg that Fall day.
On October 23, 1926 VPI defeated UVa 6-0 at the Dedication of Miles Stadium. Thirty-nine years later to the day, on October 23, 1965, VPI defeated UVa 22-14 at the Dedication of Lane Stadium.
The university’s athletic program stepped off that October afternoon in 1965, reflecting our growing university and the inevitable evolution into “Virginia Tech” from the former days as “VPI.”
Next Installment: Lane Stadium grows into Lane Stadium/Worsham Field
William G. Foster, Jr. is a member of the Class of 1965, a former member of the Board of Visitors and is now President of the Smithfield-Preston Foundation in Blacksburg.
While I was not at a Miles stadium, My father was a class of ’52 Hokie, one of the first groups of students to be allowed to live off campus, he commuted from Pembroke. He too had a pencil tray made of a section of Miles stadium, which I now proudly display in my office. It still contains the slip of paper explaining it’s origins.
Great story. Also great are all these recollections from those TSL’ers who were there to witness the early days of The Home of the Hokies. Hope some of you will dig out any old pictures you might have, run them through a scanner, and post them.
Was also at the Florida State game. The way I remember the sequence of events was a touchdown pass to Biletnikoff after which he spiked the ball. The fans started cheering “some All American” after the spike. When Fred caught a two point conversion pass, he took the football and threw it over the end zone stands in Miles. The fans really cranked up the some All American chant after that. Great game.
Another great part of that weekend I remember was a Friday parade down Main Street (it must have been homecoming weekend). There was a float with a toilet bowl and an Indian with one foot in the toilet. A sign on the float said “Flush the Semi-holes”. Much of this was the result of an article in the Florida State campus paper which spoke about the team having to fly into Roanoke and then travel all the way to Blacksburg. Said they would be drinking apple cider on the way to our hick town (or something like that – been a long time to remember the exact details). We definitely sent those over confident suckers home with their tails between their legs.
Hokie Guy (’67)
Great story – thanks for sharing!
I was a Navy veteran when entering VPI in “58. Saw the last game in Miles (own a pencil tray made of Miles bleacher wood), the first game in Lane, and the first game in Cassell. I’m still a Vethokie in Hokie Heaven! Bring on the Yellow Jackets!
My dad had one of those pencil trays from Miles Stadium. It sat on his desk for years. He was a cadet in the mid to late 30′s. I had forgotten about the tray.
133186Hokie – Our fathers might have known each other. Mine graduated in ’36.
I’ll bet one of the next in this series talks about the Home of Hokies sign replacing the Home of the Fighting Gobblers!
I remember the east side bleachers and the cracking sound the footboards under us made when all on my row stood up to cheer a great Hokie play. Don’t remember the game. Needless to say, we sat rather quietly the rest of the game.
Hoki Hoki HI!!
Miles stadium was certainly a short walk up the hill directly behind War Memorial Hall and just off of Owens Hall. As a member of the Highty Tighties we took that stroll many an afternoon in the fall. Memory may be fading but I recall the band many times sitting on the sidelines beside the team. If not there, we were certainly in the front row midfield.
Even your reference to “bleachers” on the student side over-states how bad it was. We actually sat on rail-road ties that were laid on the slope of the east side. We would have loved bleachers?
Like!
I was a cheerleader at that, my last game, as well. No words for how satisfying it felt when Biletnikoff lost his composure!
Great blog post, highly entertaining read – should be a full article series IMO.
very cool
I was at the game when Tech beat Florida State and it is my recollection that Biletnikoff through the football “out of the stadium”. Maybe he did that after he spiked it. My older brothers were attending Tech at that time.
Yes, I remember him as heaving the ball after the touchdown AND after the 2-pt. conversion he caught. It was the only game they lost all year and he was frustrated. Bob Schweikert played on a twisted ankle and was still great leading the Hokies to the big upset.
I attended that game and my recollection is the same — he threw the ball out of the south end of the stadium like a spoiled child. It was a great day to be a Hokie (as all are).
Anyone here that attended the first game in Lane against W&M remember that a cheerleader had two turkeys on a chain before the game? The north endzone had no retaining wall, just a steep hill separating the baseball field from the stadium.
As the cheerleader tried to negotiate down the steep hill with the turkeys, he lost his balance and ended up running down the hill dragging the rolling turkeys behind him. It’s a good thing PETA wasn’t around in those days.
Great stuff. That’s a hilarious image.
Could you do a re-enactment for the sake of YouTube?
A picture of Biletnokf throwing the ball into (over?) the stands was in the year-end edition of either Look or Life magazine, capturing for eternity the frustration of one of the country’s finest football players that year. It was one of the first of many subtle signals that this was no longer your father’s univeristy.
I also have a memory in the announcement of the demolishing of Miles Stadium that the new football field had been in place for a year in its new location, Lane Stadium! My brothers and I in Campbell Hall trekked through the brush, bushes and near-jungle behind the Coliseum to see if such a thing could be true, but there it was…a complete, green, manicured and perfect playing surface…the new football field for Lane Stadium concealed in a heavily wooded area untouched by constructon. I’ll never forget it. My daughter, who later lived in Campbell (!), thinks I made all this up…