Bear Stadium is a

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

venue in

Conway, Arkansas Conway is a city in the U.S. state of Arkansas and the county seat of Faulkner County, located in the state's most populous Metropolitan Statistical Area, Central Arkansas. Although considered a suburb of Little Rock, Conway is unusual in that ...

, United States. It is home to the

Central Arkansas Central Arkansas, also known as the Little Rock metro, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area, is the most populous metro area in the U.S. state of ...

Bears Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the North ...

college baseball College baseball is baseball that is played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education. In comparison to football and basketball, college competition in the United States plays a smaller role in developing professional pl ...

team of the NCAA's Division I

Southland Conference The Southland Conference, abbreviated as SLC, is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the South Central United States (specifically Texas and Louisiana). It participates in the NCAA's Division I for all sports; for football, it pa ...

. Last rebuilt in 2009, the facility has a capacity of 1,000 spectators.

History

Renovations

After the Bears' 2007 move to Division I, the UCA baseball facility was rebuilt to be appropriate to the new playing level. In the offseason between 2008 and 2009, the old facility was demolished and construction on the present one began. The newly constructed ballpark, Bear Stadium, featured 106 chairbacks (part of a 1,000-spectator grandstand),

press box The press box is a special section of a sports stadium or arena that is set up for the media to report about a given event. It is typically located in the section of the stadium holding the luxury box and can be either enclosed or open to the e ...

wheelchair A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, used when walking is difficult or impossible due to illness, injury, problems related to old age, or disability. These can include spinal cord injuries ( paraplegia, hemiplegia, and quadriplegia), cerebr ...

elevator, concourse, and backstop. Following the 2010 season, a GeoGreen

artificial turf Artificial turf is a surface of synthetic fibers made to look like natural grass. It is most often used in arenas for sports that were originally or are normally played on grass. However, it is now being used on residential lawns and commer ...

surface was installed and the playing surface was raised.

Events

The stadium's first game was on February 20, 2009, when Central Arkansas defeated Tennessee-Martin 11–5. In 2010,

Baseball Hall of Fame The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a history museum and hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, operated by private interests. It serves as the central point of the history of baseball in the United States and displays baseball-r ...

inductee

Goose Gossage Richard Michael "Goose" Gossage (born July 5, 1951) is an American former baseball pitcher who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) between 1972 and 1994. He pitched for nine different teams, spending his best years with the New York ...

threw out the first pitch before a Bears game against

Northwestern State Northwestern State University of Louisiana (NSU) is a public university primarily situated in Natchitoches, Louisiana, with a nursing campus in Shreveport and general campuses in Leesville/Fort Polk and Alexandria. It is a part of the Univer ...

. In 2011, the field hosted the Arkansas

high school baseball High may refer to: Science and technology * Height * High (atmospheric), a high-pressure area * High (computability), a quality of a Turing degree, in computability theory * High (tectonics), in geology an area where relative tectonic uplift to ...

championships.

Attendance

The stadium's first game, held on February 20, 2009, attracted 517 spectators. A record 732 people attended the April 3, 2009, game against Texas State, the day of the stadium's official dedication.

Top 10 attendance marks

Below is a list of Bear Stadium's 10 best-attended games. As of the 2011 season.

References

External links

Bear Stadium Gallery
at Arkansas Diamonds {{Arkansas NCAA Division I college baseball venue navbox College baseball venues in the United States Baseball venues in Arkansas Buildings and structures in Conway, Arkansas Central Arkansas Bears baseball University of Central Arkansas