Glory Days Festival Aims to Help Fund New Sports Complex

RICHMOND (WJON News) -- An annual festival this weekend is fun for the whole family while helping an area school's athletic teams. The Glory Days Festival will take place at the Cozy Corners Campground in Richmond on Saturday. It will have a bounce house, face painting, mechanical bull riding, a beer garden, and more. The fifth annual festival is a fundraising event for a new sports complex for Eden Valley-Watkins.

There will be music from Deep Fried Tweeters from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.

Founder Vienna Meyers says bringing the complex to Eden Valley would be a big benefit for several teams:

"We don't have an actual formal track, so our track is a dirt track that's been with the district from the beginning, and that has caused us to now, we co-op with the neighboring school district, Kimball school district, and we bus our kids to practice and to play on the Kimball track field."

In addition to the track, the complex would add a football field and other amenities. The festival has raised over $300,000 in four years.  The new complex has a total cost of around three to four million dollars.

There is a Tractor Pedal Pull from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Meyers says the football team currently has several challenges when playing its games as well:

"Eden Valley happens to be one of three schools in the entire state that doesn't own their own football field, so currently they rent the facility that they use, and the facility that they use happens to actually be a baseball field that the city owns, and so they rent that every year in order for our students to be able to play football on."

Meyers says they hope to raise enough funds and build additional support in order to break ground this fall and have the sports complex ready to be used for the 2027-2028 school year. The Glory Days Festival runs from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. and is free to attend, but some attractions do have a cost to participate.

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