The Round Valley Ensphere is a wooden-dome stadium in

Eagar, Arizona Eagar is a town in Apache County, Arizona, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of the town was 4,885. Eagar was first settled in 1871. History Brothers William Walter John Thomas and Joel Sixtus settled the area under the dir ...

, USA. It is owned by

Round Valley High School Round Valley High School is a high school serving 445 students in Eagar, Arizona, United States. It is the only high school in the Round Valley Unified School District. When Blue School District in Blue, Arizona, Blue was a K-8 school, Round Vall ...

and the

Round Valley Unified School District The Round Valley Unified School District (RVUSD) is an Arizona school district comprising five schools in Apache County, Arizona. The towns that house the schools of RVUSD include Eagar and Springerville, Arizona. As of 2006, RVUSD has 1610 studen ...

. It is the only domed

high school football High school football (french: football au lycée) is gridiron football played by high school teams in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular interscholastic sports in both countries, but its popularity is declining, part ...

stadium in the United States. Opened in 1991–92 at a cost of US$11 million, the venue seats 5,500 people for football and 9,000 for basketball and volleyball. The dome encloses a floor area of .

History

In 1987, a $12 million bond for the dome and repairs was floated and passed after it was found that

Tucson Electric Power Tucson Electric Power (TEP) is an electric utility company serving southern Arizona in the United States. It is a subsidiary of Fortis, which announced its acquisition of parent company UNS Energy in 2013. Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium, a bas ...

, which operates a generating station in the area, would have to pay for $11 million of it. (Since the utility generates 90% of the property values in the area, it pays 90% of the property taxes.) TEP, at the time facing financial issues, sued to block construction, but trial and appellate courts rejected the lawsuit. Construction began in the summer of 1990. It was forced to stop for three months for reinspection when two workers were hit by wooden beams and fell 75 feet to their deaths. The dome held its first football game on October 11, 1991, featuring the Payson High School Longhorns. The venue was closed in 2015 due to water damage and remained closed for nearly a year. The water damage was caused when heavy rains brought water into the building through the exterior doors. The damage to the synthetic turf in the facility produced elevated levels of mercury vapor, which required the facility to undergo professional remediation. After playing outside for the 2015 season, the Round Valley team returned to the dome for football games in 2016.

Structure

The Ensphere encloses of space and was the first fully day-lighted dome of its kind, allowing light and heat to enter.

Uses

School

In addition to

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

, the facility is used for basketball, track and field, and soccer.

Non-school

The dome is also used for nonschool events, such as a car show

. In 2002, as a result of the Rodeo-Chediski fire, the second-largest in Arizona history, the dome was used as a shelter. It took in 9,800 evacuees, tripling Eagar's population overnight, Jhett Hamblin, and President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

visited the shelter. The absorption of so many people almost caused the town's sewage system to be overloaded. In 2016, the Cedar Fire prompted evacuations in Pinetop, for which the Round Valley Dome was made available as an evacuation site.

References