Madison christens $5M sports complex
Xavier Kaps gets one year.
After three seasons of playing football on a grass field he remembers for its holes and competing in track on a surface where grass grew through the middle and a bubble had formed in one corner, the Madison senior finally stepped onto something entirely different Friday night.
The 17-year-old son of David and Jill Kaps wishes he had more time on Madison’s new turf, but this is his senior year, and when the season ends, so will his opportunity to play beneath the Friday night lights at a nearly $5 million athletic complex that seemed almost impossible just 18 months ago.
“It’s great,” Kaps said. “After three years of playing on that old grass facility where it was just holes after holes in the middle, and then doing this, it’s just a surreal feeling.”
Friday night, Kaps had it, and so did a community that came out to see it for the first time. The grandstands overlooking the field were full, with the band playing above a sea of red and black as fans lined the fence for a closer look. Cheerleaders gathered in front of the stands on the wide stretch of concrete that will soon become Madison’s new eight-lane track, the dance team performed at halftime and, when the Dragons scored, black touchdown towels spun throughout the stands.
Nearly everywhere people looked, something had changed. A giant red and black Dragon stretched across midfield, yellow lines marked the soccer field that will be used in the spring and new lights towered overhead. There were new concessions and restrooms, team rooms, a press box and grandstands overlooking a field that no longer had the severe crown that had been part of Madison athletics for decades.
Then the cheerleaders stretched a handmade banner across the turf with the words “LET’S GLOW LIGHT AND SHINE BRIGHT.” Kaps and his teammates gathered behind it before bursting through and becoming the first Madison football team to run onto the new field for a game.
Newman Grove/St. Edward eventually spoiled the Dragons’ hopes of christening it with a victory, but it didn’t spoil the night.
Kaps gets only one season on the field, while freshman SJ Lwin gets four. Junior Kelier Arrazcaeta Duray gets two more soccer seasons on a field where the ball can finally roll without fighting the old crown.
Track athletes will again have the opportunity to compete at home, pole vaulters will have a place to vault and some of the children who will eventually call the complex home aren’t even in high school yet.
“So many families are going to be blessed by this. So many kids are going to be blessed by this,” elementary principal and pole vault coach Reid Ehrisman said. “This is something that’s going to impact a lot of people because you’ve seen our other track and you’ve seen our other facility. It was overdue. And our school board should be thanked for seeing the bigger picture and being willing to do something this magnitude.”
Eighteen months earlier, none of it existed.
In March 2025, Superintendent Justin Frederick and members of the Madison Board of Education were at a building and grounds meeting discussing district facilities when attention turned toward an athletic complex that had become increasingly difficult to maintain and, in some cases, difficult to use.
The track dated to 1984 and had deteriorated to the point Madison could no longer host a home meet. Drainage was a persistent problem, the grass football field needed work and restroom water lines couldn’t remain operational through the coldest parts of the athletic seasons, forcing the district to bring in portable restrooms for late fall football and early spring soccer.
Board President Harlow Hanson said they needed to do something, and Frederick knew he didn’t want to spend money patching the track only to leave the larger problems behind.
“We literally just talked a year and a half ago about this project, March of ‘25, and Harlow, the board president, said, ‘We need to do something,’” Frederick said. “And I said, ‘Well, we can’t just fix the track because it’s just going to continue to have the drainage issues.’ So I said, ‘We either need to do it all or none and stay where we were.’ And they said, ‘Let’s do it.’” Those words eventually became a nearly $5 million overhaul of the complex, financed through a lease-purchase agreement rather than a traditional 20to 30-year bond. The district used its special building fund, extending the levy associated with previous projects for three additional years, with plans for synthetic turf for football and soccer, a new eightlane post-tension track, new grandstands with improved accessibility, heated concessions and restrooms, team rooms, a new press box and other improvements.
The project itself moved remarkably fast. Construction was expected to begin in April but was delayed by weather until around May 1, after Madison had already moved its spring soccer games elsewhere to make room for the work. Nemaha Sports Construction began transforming the site and a little more than four months later, the Dragons were running onto their new turf.
“Nemaha has been a really good company to work with, and they hit all the deadlines,” Frederick said. “I mean, we didn’t start this till May.”
For the athletes who had spent years competing at the old complex, what disappeared mattered nearly as much as what replaced it. Kaps remembers the holes in the football field and the grass growing through the track, but soccer players had another problem altogether: an entire playing surface that wasn’t level.
The old football field had been built with a pronounced crown, likely intended to help water drain from the center. Frederick said it dated to the days when Madison played on a 100-yard field, and shortening the playing surface to 80 yards for eight-man football made the effect even more pronounced. By the time soccer was being played there, the elevation difference was significant enough that someone standing on one sideline couldn’t see the entire body of a player standing on the other.
“Our old football field was terrible for soccer because it had such a crown,” Frederick said. “It was pretty hard to play soccer on it because if you were standing on this sideline, you could only see half the body of the people on the other sideline. So for the ref to even see where out of bounds were, it was pretty bad.”
Sixteen-year-old junior Kelier Arrazcaeta Duray knows exactly what Frederick is talking about. The son of Blanca Valenzuela and Lazar Arrazcaeta Duray plays both football and soccer for Madison, and although a shoulder injury kept him from playing in Friday’s football opener, he stood on the new turf already imagining what will happen when a soccer ball is put on it this spring.
“It’s gonna be amazing, honestly,” Arrazcaeta Duray said. “I just already know the ball is gonna be moving way better. On our last field, we had like a hill kind of on the side. It would be like a small hill and you would have to run, and then the ball wouldn’t move as much. But now that it’s turf, the ball is flying.”
For Arrazcaeta Duray, the transformation is still a little difficult to believe.
“I didn’t know we could do this, honestly,” he said. “I didn’t know this was possible to get this down here, but they made it happen, so it’s great. This is a great upgrade.”
Ehrisman had a similar reaction a few days before opening night, only his moment came without the band, crowd or Friday night lights. He came down to the complex at about 10 one morning and simply walked around, taking in a project he had watched develop but that somehow looked different when he stood in the middle of it.
“I came down here the other day and just walked around and it was just — I don’t know. Humbling’s not the word, but just mesmerized, kind of, I guess,” he said. “To be able to think that our school board is willing to support this and do this for our kids.”
As Madison’s pole vault coach, Ehrisman’s attention naturally goes toward the track still being completed. For years, Madison athletes have traveled elsewhere to compete because their own school couldn’t host a meet. Soon, the eight-lane track will surround the same turf being used by football and soccer, and Ehrisman is looking forward to seeing athletes compete at home again.
“I don’t know if I’m more excited about the turf or the track,” he said. “Even for our track kids, our soccer kids, it’s just going to be so much cleaner. It’s nicer.”
If Kaps remembers exactly what Madison athletes had before, 14-year-old SJ Lwin represents a generation that soon won’t.
The freshman son of Sah Ka Pue and Nyein Lwin gets all four years on the new field. Friday was his first home football game as a high school player, meaning the first time Lwin ever suited up for a home game was also the first time anyone suited up for one on Madison’s new turf.
Yet before the Dragons ran through the banner, before the stands erupted and before the first football was kicked across the field, Lwin unfolded a piece of paper near the end zone. His teammates and student managers gathered around him and dropped to their knees on the turf as the freshman began reading a prayer he had written for them. As he read, Lwin slowly turned so everyone in the circle could hear his words.
There was a nearly $5 million athletic complex surrounding him, but the 14-yearold was thinking about his teammates.
“Because I care for my teammates and I’m trying my best to be humble and modest and think of myself less and think of others, too,” Lwin said.
The moment lasted only a few minutes before everyone stood and Friday night resumed around them. For Lwin, there will be many more nights on that field, something he already understands is an opportunity not everyone before him had.
“I feel very grateful to have the opportunity,” he said.
Kaps understands that from the opposite end of high school. He would have liked four years, too, but he gets one.
“I kind of wish I had more, but I’m grateful for this one year on this field,” Kaps said. “This was great to play on.”
Friday night wasn’t only about the athletes. The band filled the grandstands with music, cheerleaders stood along the edge of the unfinished track and the dance team took over the field at halftime. Parents, grandparents, alumni and community members filled the seats and lined the fence, while Frederick, who had spent much of the week at the complex with Athletic Director Landonn Mackey working through all the details that come with opening something entirely new, finally got to see it full.
“This is awesome,” Frederick said. “Landynn Mackey, the AD, and I have spent a lot of time out here this week. It’s all new. We’re getting all the concessions and stuff out here. But it’s been good. I’m glad there’s such a nice crowd here.”
The crowd wanted a victory, and so did the players. When Madison scored, black touchdown towels went into the air throughout the stands, and once the game began there was nothing ceremonial about what the Dragons wanted from the first football game on their new field.
“We wanted this one tonight because it’s the first one, you know what I mean? Season opener,” Arrazcaeta Duray said. “But a couple plays go wrong and then they get up, and they have the momentum.”
Newman Grove/St. Edward eventually walked off Madison’s new field with the victory, leaving the Dragons with a loss attached to the first football game played there. But the next home game won’t be the first, and neither will the one after that.
Eventually the novelty will fade, the track will be finished and soccer will arrive in the spring. Madison will host track meets again, kids will grow accustomed to concessions with running water in cold weather and there will eventually be students who have no memory of a football field filled with holes, grass growing through a track or a soccer field crowned so dramatically players couldn’t fully see one another from opposite sidelines.
Kaps will remember. He knows exactly what was there before, and now he knows what came after. He only gets one year with it, but that’s enough to understand what it means.
“Thank you so much,” Kaps said of the school board. “We’ve been needing this for the last four years, and now that it’s finally happened, it’s great to have the first game. Just amazing.”
