Saying goodbye to Veterans Memorial Stadium

The LBCC Vikings football team played their final game at the historic Veterans Memorial Stadium which resulted in a 41-7 loss against Riverside City College, bringing a bittersweet end to Saturday’s football game.

The stadium is slated for demolition as the college moves forward with plans for a new $250 million athletic complex expected to be completed in 2029.

While it was the final game inside the stadium, it was only the beginning of another season for the Vikings and another chapter for LBCC athletics.

For the alumni who returned to witness this last game on these grounds, replacing the stadium meant saying goodbye to a place that provided more than a football field.

Among them was former LBCC football player Kevin Frederick, who played at LBCC in the early 1990s and later returned to the program as a coach.

When Frederick arrived at LBCC, gang violence was prevalent in many of the communities players came from. The football program brought together young men from Long Beach, Compton, Carson, Los Angeles and other surrounding cities.

Once they stepped onto the field, Frederick said, those differences had to be left behind.

“We had to put all that personal beef aside to become one team,” Frederick said. “And with the instruction of Coach [Wilbert] Shaw and Coach [Jim] Murphy, we came in together and made leaders of men.” 

For Frederick, those coaches became more than authority figures on the sidelines. He described Shaw and Murphy as being prominent figures to players navigating college and life beyond football. 

Their expectations followed players beyond the field.

“Long Beach City was the beginning of our college years of learning how to go to class, learning how to, you know, be on time, complete assignments, show up for your teammates,” Frederick said. “Don’t be a problem, be a solution.”

Players learned how to dress professionally, respect their professors and represent the college, Frederick said.

“Don’t be a menace on the campus,” he recalled. “Be a light.” 

For Frederick, that guidance came at a pivotal moment in his life. 

He said he was a gang member and had been shot before arriving at LBCC. Football offered him a way to leave the environment he knew in Compton.

“Without Long Beach City, I wouldn’t be alive,” Frederick said. “It saved my life.” 

Football eventually took Frederick outside of Compton, allowing him to travel, earn a scholarship and experience parts of the country he never imagined seeing.

Frederick said he stayed away from drugs and jail and eventually became a dean at a private school, a career that has lasted nearly 27 years. 

Some of the discipline that helped shape Frederick’s generation was delivered through the stadium itself.

Players who failed to meet expectations could receive what Frederick and his teammates called a “party.”

Despite its name, there was very little celebrating involved.

A “party” meant running up and down the vigorous stadium steps and laps around the track.

“You don’t want to hear, ‘Hey man, you got a party today at practice,’” Frederick said. 

More than three decades later, those same concrete steps remain part of the Viking football experience.

Second-year LBCC football player Hesi Robinson refers to one conditioning tradition as the “Viking mile.”

The similarities between his experience and those of players decades before him are not accidental.

“I feel like a lot of the players that played early on came back to be coaches at Long Beach City College,” Robinson said. “So I think they instill a lot of the disciplines and a lot of the care … what they learned from their past coaches into what they coach to us today.” 

“Their biggest motto is not just football,” Robinson said. “It’s about being great … being great men, especially when we get older, because football doesn’t last forever.” 

Robinson hopes football can provide his teammates with opportunities to continue their education at four-year universities and improve circumstances for themselves and their families.

“Everybody comes from different backgrounds, everybody comes from different situations, so not everybody is as fortunate as the next man,” Robinson said. 

That opportunity is part of what has connected generations of Vikings who have passed through the stadium. 

For Brock Ana, LBCC alumni for 2009-2011 preserving the school’s history after demolition does not necessarily mean keeping the building standing. 

He suggested preserving what reflected former coaches, players and “fallen Vikings,” creating a place where alumni can return and still see themselves represented. 

“You can change your building, but you can’t change the spirit of the foundation, which are the players,” Ana said. “Keep the names alive … in that new field.” 

Robinson, one of the players representing the newest generation of that foundation, shares a similar view.

The day after playing in the final game, he returned to practice and could no longer use the field.

“It did feel some type of way,” Robinson said. 

Still, for him, the demolition does not mark the end of what generations of players built there.

“I don’t think that the tradition is going to die,” Robinson said. “I don’t think that the spirit is going to die when that stadium is torn down.” 

Long Beach City College will be hosting a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday September 9 at the Veterans Memorial Stadium.