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For two decades, a group of Camden residents have been working to restore Camden High School’s football field back to its former glory. The bleachers, press box and field turf have all been replaced. There’s a new ticket booth and flag pole.

Now, all that’s left is a field house, where the teams can change into their uniforms and attendees can use the bathroom.

The ad hoc committee of residents are envisioning a 5,980-square-foot building to replace the former facility, which was torn down in 2023.

Longtime Camden resident Stan White, who is spearheading the effort, said the committee’s structure allows it to work with the Camden City School District and without obtaining a nonprofit status.

“[The Camden Board of Education] accept the funds,” he said. “They gave us the resources to do the paperwork.”

White and fellow committee members — Keith Benson Sr., Ronsha A. Dickerson, Amir M. Khan and Joyce Miller — launched a campaign called “We can do this! With a little help from our friends,” with the goal of raising the $5 million necessary to build the new field house.

The committee made presentations to the Camden City Council and the Camden City School Advisory Board during their September meetings, hoping to get city leaders on board.

Camden High’s old field house was ‘a trifling mess’

Before its demolition, the old field house was in disarray for a long time.

When Dickerson asked her father about his memories of the building from when he attended Camden High School, she was told “It was a trifling mess when I was in school, and that’s back in the mid-’70s.”

Committee member Khan played football for Cherry Hill West High School around the same time as Dickerson’s father, Frank Greene. Decades later, when White showed him the state of the field house, Khan recalled it “looked worse” from when he played in the early 1970s.

“At the time, they weren’t going to be able to play home games here unless they did something,” he said.

The former field house had many issues, according to a report by Garrison Architects.

There were no accessible bathrooms, and the facilities were not only not up to code, but were unsanitary.

The lavatories and shower areas only supplied cold water. The architect noted the shower areas had appeared abandoned “and are collecting stored materials and debris.”

When the city did not have the money to address the issues, Khan, a pastor, urged his church for an outreach event to rent a trailer with bathrooms.

He said impact was immediately felt among the team.

“Just by them being able to be in another facility other than that old, raggedy field house, you saw their self-esteem build up,” he said. “You saw people get excited.”

The school district is making the most of limited resources

The school district installed temporary trailers for bathrooms and locker rooms.

“We had to bring something here,” said Warren Bethea, senior director of facilities for the Camden City School District. “It should have been temporary, but it feels like it’s permanent.”

Bringing in trailers, Bethea said, was more convenient than for students to walk back and forth between the athletic fields and the Camden High Campus. They are less than a mile apart — about a 15-minute walk.

But they cost $100,000 a year to rent and maintain. There were also no lockers. When WHYY News visited the athletic fields in September, arrangements were being made to install temporary lockers where players can store their equipment.

Bethea said he would love to do more for the Camden High field, but he has to spread resources across the district equally. For example, as he was replacing the field turf at the Camden High field, he also replaced the track at Eastside High School.

“The track was tore up, they couldn’t even have a track meet,” he said. “I would love that these kids and the guests and the away team [have] a beautiful experience, but everything comes down to that dollar.”

Even as efforts to raise the money for the field house are underway, Bethea’s team is already preparing for it by installing new electric and water lines. He appreciates the work of the ad hoc committee.

“They open up avenues for the district to go through to get this extra funding and they on top of it,” he said. “Even when they take an L, they regroup and they come back and I know they’re not done.”

The community rallies around the Camden High Panthers

The Camden High School Football team have been solid contenders for much of the last decade. They won their most recent sectional championship in 2022, the school’s first title since 1976.

Camden’s student athletes have a grit that Dickerson described as “crazy.”

“They have this level of perseverance that — it’s not that we teach them this, it’s just cultural,” she said. “We don’t have the best here, but we bring the best out of them.”

Members of the committee said a new field house would be a boost to Camden High’s student athletes’ self-esteem and show them that they are equal to their suburban counterparts.

“It’ll inspire our children to think that if people think this much of us, maybe there’s something to it,” Benson said. “There’ll probably be an improvement in their attitudes and in their performance.”