Where was the original Kankakee High Located? Was the field at the school? The only loss in that 7-1 season in 53 was 6 to 0 to Danville.The 62 team was great at 8-1 only losing to Joliet
The original Kankakee High? I have no idea where it was, as all of the Kankakee School buildings prior to 1950 to my knowledge no longer exist. I remember reading not too long ago that there was a Kankakee High which burned down in the late 40's about a block or so south of the Courthouse, perhaps on the site of the 1970's county jail. I also know that the Kankakee Holiday Tournament started the year that the new high school opened (2017 was the 68th Holiday Tournament, which puts the building at 1950). The 1950 high school building, after Eastridge & Westview opened in the mid-60's, evolved into King Junior High - King fed into Eastridge, Kennedy Junior High fed into Westview. With the Eastridge building now Kankakee Junior High, King and Kennedy are "middle schools" - 3rd to 6th grades I believe. King is on the south side of Court Street less than a mile west of I-57...
Kankakee's outdoor athletic facilities would be quite impressive if they bothered to maintain them. Immediately south of King is the Lincoln Cultural Center, which hosts Kankakee's Montessori school and a beautiful auditorium. East of the LCC you can see the remains of what was likely a cinder track in the days of King being the high school, and presumably the football field. It appears that the west side of the track was sacrificed for parking at some point & paved over, and the south curve has playground equipment placed on top of it.
Eastridge and Westview were built from the same set of plans, and have the same gym/auditorium/cafeteria as a result...although Westview now KHS has had some significant money spent on additions and updates since the merger. The track remains at Eastridge/KJHS, but is in poor condition, and the scoreboard is the only remains of a stadium. KHS put in turf last year, making Spurs Stadium a very functional facility. Spurs Stadium? Westview originally had no bleachers in the gym or stadium, and the booster club was known as the Spurs and raised the money for most of the original facilities...
KHS spends a good chunk of its summer training program at Kennedy, several blocks north of KHS. Kennedy shares a huge block with Taft Elementary, a church and the Kankakee Park District's Civic Auditorium and Historical Society. There is a full sized track in the field between Kennedy and Taft, which presumably was Kennedy's track when it was a junior high...Kennedy's track is actually in better shape than Eastridge/KJHS's track, and far fewer dandelions...lol...and they probably could fit more than 10 full sized football fields between the schools...which is why the summer program is based there.