Veterans Memorial Stadium (also known as Veterans Stadium, Vets Stadium or simply The Vet) is a stadium located south of the Liberal Arts Campus of Long Beach City College in Long Beach, California. It is the home stadium to a number of local area high school football teams, as well as Long Beach City College's football team. It was also home to Long Beach State's football team until the program disbanded in 1991.
The stadium is also popular as a movie set for a number of Hollywood motion pictures. It also hosted the 1985 and 1988 Motorcycle Speedway World Team Cup Finals.
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Veterans Stadium opened in 1948, and was owned by the City of Long Beach for a number of decades. In 1987, Long Beach City College acquired Veterans Stadium from the City of Long Beach, and in the 1990s, the college upgraded the stadium for use by the football teams of local area high schools. One of the most memorable football contests held at the stadium involved Long Beach Polytechnic High School and Lakewood Highschool, drawing over 11,500 spectators and regional television coverage.
Probably the most historically notable football contest at this stadium involved a completely different code—rugby league. In 1987, after the three regular matches in the Australian State of Origin series between Queensland and New South Wales, the two teams went to Long Beach for a fourth match, drawing an announced crowd of 12,439 to see New South Wales win 30–18. The canonicity of the match has been in dispute ever since, with sources in New South Wales, including the Australian Rugby League, counting the match result in official series records and sources in Queensland counting the match for individual player statistics but ignoring it for purposes of team records.
In 2004, Veterans Stadium received another upgrade. A new SprinTurf playing surface replaced the old playing surface in time for the 2004 football season.
Veterans Stadium is the home stadium to the Los Alamitos High School Griffins.
Veterans Stadium seats 11,600, and are on one side of the stadium, a grandstand facing east. 7,000 of the seats are aluminum bench bleachers, with the other 4,600 seats having fixed chairbacks. The field is surrounded by a nine-lane, 400-meter track.
The stadium is located on Lew Davis Street between Clark Avenue and Faculty Avenue. It is three miles west of Interstate 605 (use the Carson Street exit) and two miles north of Interstate 405 (use the Lakewood Boulevard exit or the Bellflower Boulevard exit).
The field is open at both ends and there is a practice field on the north side and a large parking lot on the south side. There are large locker rooms for both home and visiting teams in the stadium and a smaller room for game officials. There are lights for night play using metal-halide lamps on eight towers. Veterans Stadium also features a two-level press box (capacity 100) atop the west grandstand.
Spectator amenities include 4,000 surface parking spaces, two ticket booths with two windows each, three permanent concessions, and a combined message board and scoreboard.