If 2020 was the year of the locked gates at Finley Stadium due to the coronavirus halting activities for multiple months, this is the year of sparring inside the 20,412-seat facility.
Saturday night's Best of Preps Jamboree abruptly ended in mayhem when a fight broke out in the concourse area during the early stages of the final 20-minute session between Baylor and Notre Dame. When officers intervened and a Hamilton County deputy deployed his Taser, the sound was mistaken for gunshots, which resulted in players and coaches racing off the football field and fans fleeing from the stands.
Finley Stadium was evacuated at that point, and the rest of the event scratched. One juvenile was taken into custody.
"It's so unfair to the kids who are trying to play football," Stadium Corp. board chairman Mike Davis said after Tuesday's quarterly meeting. "All of those kids practice, and they bust their butts to come out here. This is their showcase, and to think there are these outsiders - it's certainly not the players doing it - and the people attending doing it.
"Go do it somewhere else. It's upsetting, and it's obviously not just happening here. I'm getting tired of waking up and hearing about another shooting."
The Best of Preps incident follows the late May fracas that erupted inside Finley at Howard High School's graduation ceremonies. That situation involved more than 20 people, and it resulted in strengthened security measures for the jamboree.
No spectators were allowed into Finley Stadium this past Thursday through Saturday without first clearing hand-held metal detectors.
"We had that episode at a Hamilton County graduation event, and it seems to involve young people," Davis said. "Is this the expectation for 2022? We could look at some things that would be a little quicker but just as effective, such as walking through like you do at the airport, but that costs money and takes time to get."
Davis has not received any updates from the Chattanooga Police Department since Saturday night and considers the case closed.
The Best of Preps Jamboree was one of the first big events for new Finley Stadium executive director Brian Wright, a graduate of Arts & Sciences and UTC who worked at Finley under Merrill Eckstein and Paul Smith. Wright left Chattanooga for an opportunity at Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which was under construction at the time.
Wright worked his way up to operations project manager at the $1.6 billion facility.
"We're definitely going to follow industry standards and the best practices," Wright said, "and we're implementing security protocols that have proven to be successful, like a bag buffer zone, which stops large bags and suspicious persons 50 to 100 feet away from the gates instead of right on top of the gates. We have communicating protocols and are performing metal detection, and we've been having a consistent security presence throughout the concourse.
"It was an unfortunate ending to an otherwise really good event. The jamboree is really designed for those players to showcase themselves at the best stadium in Chattanooga, and for 98% of the time, we got to do that. The important thing is that everyone left safely, and there were no injuries or weapons involved."
Both Davis and Wright were complementary of the officers and security detail both inside and outside of the stadium this past weekend, and they admit that what transpired Saturday night is partly due to the jitters that many Chattanooga-area residents are experiencing given this volatile summer.
"I don't know that I've ever been around when somebody got tasered, not even a test thing, and I didn't know that it made a loud sound," Davis said. "Obviously it was enough to alert people here. From what I heard, the officer was justified, and that's been backed up.
"We're dealing with these things the best way we can. I want the word out that it's safe to come to Finley."
Budget approved
Wright presented a budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year that calls for a net operating income of $124,355.86.
"The goal is to beat that, obviously, but we feel this is a very conservative budget," Wright said.
The projection is roughly half of this past year's $240,992.30 net income, which was bolstered by the Kane Brown concert in early May.
Happy coexistence?
Though he has been on the job just 45 days, Wright was asked his thoughts about the impending multiuse stadium for the Lookouts. Wright was an intern a decade ago under Lookouts president Rich Mozingo.
"It's great for the Lookouts and for Chattanooga to have a new stadium just a stone's throw away from here," he said. "In a lot of ways, they can complement each other."
When asked if he could envision the two facilities bidding on the same event, Wright said, "We're still three years away, so we'll see."
Odds and ends
The only high school football game during the regular season scheduled for Finley is next Friday's matchup between McCallie and Woodward Academy. The Chattanooga FC drew its largest crowd of the year Aug. 6, when 3,479 witnessed CFC's 3-0 blanking of the Maryland Bobcats. While Tuesday's Stadium Corp. meeting was transpiring, workers were painting "CHATTANOOGA" in both of the end zones.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.