Thomas J. Keenan Stadium was recently revamped with the addition of a new bright orange scoreboard. After 30 years of service, athletic director Mr. Felty thought it was time to replace the old scoreboard with a bigger, more modern, scoreboard.
“We have a beautiful stadium with a beautiful turf field. The scoreboard that was there was old, and so I just felt that it needed an upgrade,” Mr. Felty said.
The new scoreboard will be able to generate more money for Perkiomen Valley athletics by showing advertisements along with the scores.
“This scoreboard gives us the capability of generating yearly revenue by doing ads on it,” Mr. Felty said.
PV signed a contract for athletic training services with St. Lukes, where St. Lukes will provide sponsorship for each year of the contract. PV will be using the sponsorship money to pay for the scoreboard.
The new scoreboard cost about $145,000, and eventually, after the hard work of eight to ten people, the 3,000-pound scoreboard was installed.
“We needed all kinds of workers. There’s a lot that goes into it from digging holes, to setting posts, to pouring concrete to setting the scoreboard video with all the ad panels,” Ross, one of the workers, said.
OES Scoreboards manufactured the new panels and have been doing so for little and major league teams for over forty years. OES will also provide PV with training and demo software that can create graphics and will work the scoreboard.
“The current plan is to have our students create the graphics and run that experience during the games,” Felty said.
The new scoreboard enhances the game day experience at all of the sporting events that take place in the stadium. Many students are excited to see the new scoreboard on football game days.
“I’m excited to see what the new scoreboard would look like on Friday nights under the lights,” junior Sean Wagoner said.
The scoreboard was used for the first time at the Coach Ron Livers Vikings Invitational on April 9 and will be functioning for graduation on June 9.