Crete is one of the largest school systems in Southeast Nebraska, but for decades they've shared their athletic spaces with a nearby university. Now, a groundbreaking ceremony marked the first step in creating new spaces for Cardinals athletes to call their own home.

With many Cardinal students and staff in attendance, Crete Public Schools officially broke ground Monday on a multi-million-dollar campaign to create new facilities that will allow the school to host practices and athletic events for nearly every team in the school on their own campus. 

“This isn’t just a construction site, it’s a launchpad for something extraordinary,” Dr. Josh McDowell, superintendent of Crete Public Schools, said in his address at Monday's groundbreaking ceremony. “For decades, our Crete students have competed with incredible heart, commitment and talent. They’ve done so with limited facilities on borrowed fields, often without a true home to call their own. And yet, they’ve continued to rise. And now we rise with them. Project Rise is our opportunity to match that spirit with this space, to match our student pride with places worthy of that pride. With today’s groundbreaking, we begin building a multi-sport, multi-purpose facility that will support generations of Cardinals to come.” 

“Today reminds us that education extends far beyond four walls,” said Marilea Thiem, director of the Crete Public Schools Foundation. “This complex represents more than just new turf and bleachers – it represents teamwork, perseverance, leadership and pride. It’s a space where students will learn life lessons that can’t be taught from a textbook. And it’s a place where our community will support, celebrate, and inspire future generations.” 

“Our philosophy is we want to provide a place where community and passion will collide,” said Mark Littrell, a director of business development at Mammoth Construction, which is heading the construction operation. “And as a former coach for 43 years, my philosophy was always that your sports facilities like these fields we’re getting ready to build are your biggest classrooms in the district, because it not only provides a place for practice for your band and your teams, but it’s for your physical education classes as well.” 

Monday marked the official launch of a plan that’s been in the works at Crete Public Schools for more than half a decade. Now, the first phase of Crete’s Project Rise campaign will renovate the existing field space, adding in new lighting, permanent bleachers, and a press box with a modern scoreboard. Eventually, the practice field that hosted the groundbreaking will be converted into additional parking spaces, and later phases of the operation will include expansions and improvements for tennis and softball.  

“There’s been six years of meetings where we’ve kicked around different ideas – how do we make this happen, what is the best way to utilize this space? In our opinion it’s always been an underutilized area, and we wanted to make it better for our students, our families, our coaches and our staff, and I think the point that we reached today does all of those things,” said Crete Board of Education President Justin Kuntz. 

“The support for our teams has just been extraordinary,” Activities Director Matt Martin said. “So I’m overjoyed to be a part of something that’s going to bring a lot of pride, a gathering place for our families, our kids, something we can all be proud of, to take part in and watch it grow, and build the Crete tradition for years to come.” 

Project Rise is broken down into three main phases, with a total cost between nine and 10 million dollars, McDowell said. The district is footing the full cost of phase one, the installation of new lights, bleachers and parking. The second phase is to expand the press box, and add in restrooms and concession stands, amenities that are needed before the space can be a suitable host for a varsity-level event, Martin said.  

Spacing out the project into phases gives the district some extra time to raise the rest of the support and the funding from the community needed to sustain the costs of the rest of the project, McDowell said. And ultimately, if the funding goal is reached, there could be a phase four of Project Rise, which would enable Crete baseball to be played on school grounds as well.  

For years, Crete Public Schools has shared space and facilities with NAIA Doane University, which is just a few blocks away from the Crete campus. Crete has hosted varsity home football and soccer games and track meets at Al Papik Field, home of the Tigers, for decades. And though that partnership will persist throughout the construction process, once that’s complete it will give Cardinal athletes their own space to call home.  

“It’s game-changing. The things that people don’t see are the number of fields that are used for practice every day. The marching band that’s using the school parking lot in the morning to prepare for their competition, and we’ve got 150 kids in the band year in and year out,” Martin said. “We’re a growing community. We play multiple levels in almost every single sport that we offer right now, so it’s not just Friday night lights that matter to us, it’s freshman football on Thursday, it’s JV football on Monday, it’s sometimes five games of soccer going on here in the spring. Those kinds of things are hard to pull off when Doane and us are trying to work together on scheduling a limited amount of space.” 

Construction is scheduled to officially begin this week, and the school expects to host freshman and JV football events in their new facility as soon as this fall, with plans to host varsity soccer matches on campus next spring, and, potentially, varsity football games in Fall 2026.  

“It’s the end of my fourth year here and we’ve been talking about this since I got here,” Martin said. “So to finally be at a starting point is pretty amazing, and I think when everybody sees the field when they come to a freshman game, when they see some of those first events, it will really invigorate this community to continue to build and grow that facility into something of our own.” 

“This isn’t just about athletics, though – it's about opportunity,” McDowell said. “It’s about giving our students access, and it’s about giving every student the tools they need, and the time – and turf – they deserve.”