West Orange, Texas, Wednesday afternoon. The sun still shone through the dark clouds with refreshing rain sprinkling down. The wind kicked up a few miles per hour as the West Orange-Stark football team began its drills.

Adjacent to the practice field is the staid ol’ stadium, home to championship and championship-game teams of old. The bleachers are about as big — hard to count the seats, of course — as in any of the “big three” stadiums in greater Port Arthur. Yet, upon looking at the bottom of the home bleachers from behind and slowly scanning them upward, not an elevator is to be found.

It’s no less of a football stadium. It’s still a stadium of champions.

Before indoor practice facilities became common for high schools, many Texas high school stadiums already did it the Texas way — big. 

The size of each stadium is a sign of the investment the communities have made in the schools, not just for the schools but the communities themselves. Anything extra, even if necessary, is just icing on the cake.

Impressively, West Orange-Stark, Port Arthur Memorial, Nederland and Port Neches-Groves, just to name a few, have built tradition-rich football programs without an indoor practice facility … in the state of Texas, no less. The weight rooms are roomy and operational. The dress rooms are still hallowed ground. The playing field is level for everyone.

In the Texas summer, there’s sunshine and rain. We all go through it. It doesn’t stop the football players. They adjust in practices and games.

But, no doubt, the case for making good facilities even better is legitimate.

Some people just can’t jog up the 50 or so rows of seats, so why not put in an elevator? Some of us, for that matter, face a long path to the restroom, so why not reconstruct press boxes?

Well, I have an answer for that: We, as in reporters and statisticians aren’t the ones making the grades and playing the game (although what we do is pretty important).

Now, what about the student-athletes? Well, time has revealed that they’ve kept up the tradition of Texas high school football without a practice facility.

That’s not to say one is not needed. It’s to say everyone from the students to the administrations and the people they serve have always done it big.

What I’ve seen for my very eyes at the local schools has been quite refreshing, actually. On my right hand is my high school class ring, and immediately two things from Dollarway High come to mind — five state championships and a worn-out stadium in a worn-out school.

Still, I got my education from there. I roamed the sidewalks (not many halls there). I played in the gym, which was slightly renovated 16 years after my graduation. I covered many games in the crowded press box, stretching my neck out to see the scoreboard when a new drive starts or a touchdown is scored.

But what about the football players there? They began and continued a winning tradition in that very school, which is facing closure by the Arkansas education department for a myriad of reasons.

The schools here are not. They’ve upgraded over the years. One district is considering a 4 percent raise for its teachers.

That’s money well spent, and it would be great evidence that the West Orange-Starks, Memorials, PN-Gs and Nederlands of the world are earning straight A’s — academically, artistically and athletically.

Some believe that championships and tradition should just translate into added conveniences. Some think that better facilities are the difference between championships and the mere existence of a program.

But we do know this: the administrations and contractors here built something that still stand the test of time. The student-athletes and communities add the tradition.

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I.C. Murrell can be reached at ic.murrell@panews.com. On Twitter:  @ICMurrellPANews