For most young athletes, high school is the pinnacle of their sports career.
For seniors who will not play in college, the last hurrah is bittersweet. Never again will they show up for tryouts, meet up for captain’s practice, endure pre-season workouts, prepare for the season opener, celebrate the thrill of victory, suffer the agony of defeat, play their best and lose or get lucky and win.
They will not squeeze into a yellow school bus for the ride to away games, bask in the cheers of fellow students, be the center of attention for Homecoming and Senior Night, see their name or photo in the local paper or on Instagram.
Seniors are the leaders, the captains, the stars, the envy of freshmen. In the fall they lead the charge on to football and soccer fields. They are heroes.
Now imagine what it must be like to lose your home field, the place where you feel most comfortable, where you can look in the stands and see your parents, your girlfriend or boyfriend, and your circle of friends.
That, folks, is what athletes at Mt. Hope High School in Bristol have experienced this season. Their football and soccer fields and their track are gone, the land now a staging area for front end loaders, backhoes, tanker trucks, dumpsters, porta-johns, construction trailers and, soon, tons of steel for a new $133-million school.
The tennis courts are also gone, the concrete foundation for the new building taking their place. Mountains of dirt bury practice fields. Four light towers that illuminated the football field stand as silent sentries.
So instead of marching across campus to a game, soccer players board a bus for the 3.5-mile drive to Roger Williams University, where they practice on grass and play on artificial turf.
Football players practiced on the campus lacrosse field until it needed to be re-seeded for the spring season and they needed lights when dusk arrived earlier. Now they bus 1.5 miles or so to the Bristol Parks and Recreation fields adjacent to Colt State Park.
Their temporary home field for games is Kickemuit Middle School in Warren, a 4-mile bus ride from Mt. Hope.
A regional high school for students from Bristol and Warren, Mt. Hope is tucked in a residential neighborhood about a half-mile from the start of Bristol’s famous July Fourth parade. It is named for the nearby hill that was home to Metacom, the Wampanoag chief from 1662 to 1676. English settlers knew him as King Philip.
Christy Belisle is the athletics director at Mt. Hope. I spoke with her recently about the challenges of maintaining an interscholastic athletics program during construction.
“Our commitment from the beginning — and it still is — is to give the kids the best experience possible regardless of where they’re playing and to make it feel as much like home as we can,” she told me.
“I think we’ve been mostly successful. Football just had a move, and any time there’s movement and change, there’s initial difficulty, a little pushback, a little ‘Why are we doing this?’ You know, that kind of thing,” she said.
“Coaches have been great, championing change and getting behind the plan that’s in place and really running with it. Is it ideal to get on a school bus every day to go to practice? No, it’s not.”
Homecoming is this weekend. Belisle explored securing lights for the football game Saturday against Cranston East to give her players a taste of Friday Night Lights – the lights at Kickemuit are not up to 2025 standards, so the Huskies have been playing day or twilight games. She needs more time to test portable lights and is aiming for the playoffs now.
Kickemuit, owned by Warren Parks and Recreation and not the regional school district, has already benefited from construction in neighboring Bristol.
“New uprights. A new scoreboard. Sort of give and take all over the place,” Belisle said.
I talked to three Mt. Hope seniors, and as the end of their season looms, they have adjusted to the less than ideal circumstances. Thea Jackson of Bristol, a co-captain of the girls soccer team, was not thrilled with the changes.
“Initially, I was kind of upset about it because the last three years I’ve been playing on the same field, and it was more like a sentimental thing because the last time I played on that field I had no idea,” she told me.
It didn’t take long for her to change her mind about calling Roger Williams home for her final season.
“I really like that we play there because playing on a turf field is a totally different atmosphere. There’s so much more adrenaline. The fans are louder. I think I was more upset at first because it wasn’t at our school. I thought there were going to be fewer people because it’s a little bit more of a trip. But that honestly hasn’t been an issue. People still come. It’s better for the fans. When I go to watch the boys games, it’s so much easier to watch. Even as a spectator I enjoy it better than our other field,” she said.
Jackson is excited about Senior Night this coming Friday against Pilgrim. “That’s another thing to look forward to,” she said.
Tommy Loesell also plays soccer for the Huskies.
“I don’t think it’s been too bad. We’ve been lucky and have been able to play on the turf at Roger Williams — and it’s not too far. I’d say I’ve really enjoyed it. We’ve gotten more fans, too, because the stadium is bigger and nicer,” he said. Buildings nearby produce an echo that makes the crowd noise sound louder.
Preston Brodd is a safety and wide receiver on the football team. His final season has been one of adjustments.
“We’re getting into a routine practicing on our field, and then all of a sudden we’re practicing on the lacrosse field, and then from there now we have to leave the school 15 minutes earlier to head on to a bus to Colt State Park. So the biggest thing for us is not to focus on where the field is and just keep the intensity up and keep our priorities straight,” he said.
Easy peasy, right?
“For me personally, it was not so easy in the beginning. It’s definitely easier now, but leaving the school 15 minutes earlier is definitely not ideal.”
But playing games at Kickemuit in Warren is like a homecoming for Brodd and many teammates.
“It’s a little bit of a throwback since I played for the East Bay Warriors [Pop Warner program], and that’s where our home field was. The seniors and I, we’ve all been playing together for six or seven years so we’re back to our home field, which is cool in a way.”
But it’s not the same as playing at Mt. Hope before the boisterous student section known as the Dog Pound.
“It was pretty convenient for many of the students to make it to our home field, but now they have to go to Kickemuit. It’s a little more of a burden,” he said. He hopes the district can provide a fan bus for Homecoming next Saturday.
The rebuilding girls tennis team uses the hard courts at Roger Williams.
“Tennis probably gets the least amount of love in the whole scenario just because they’re playing at 5:30,” Belisle said. “They usually play right after school so that’s been a bit of a shift and change for them. But they’re getting better every day. I go out there, and they’re happy. They’re working out.”
Plus, at this point in the season it’s dark, so they are playing at night.
Looking ahead, the new school is scheduled to be substantially finished in May of 2027 and open for learning that fall. As soon as the football staging area is clear of steel, work will begin on a synthetic turf multipurpose field for football, soccer, lacrosse and possibly field hockey. A track will enclose the field. The existing grass field nearby will remain for practice and on occasional games.
The current high school building will be demolished and new tennis courts, baseball and softball fields built.
Belisle praised officials and citizens of Bristol and Warren and at Roger Williams University for working together on this project. She also extended kudos to Superintendent Ana C. Riley “who has been amazing in going to bat for our kids and making sure they have what they need and athletics continue to function.”
When the new Mt. Hope opens, comparisons to the magnificent four-year-old $190-million East Providence High School complex will be inevitable. Belisle said EP is beautiful but the new Mt. Hope campus will be “more environmentally friendly” with more grass and less synthetic material.
“I think our school will make a statement that’s a little more small town,” she added.
A small town feel that the current Mt. Hope sophomores will experience when they are seniors playing on new home fields for the first time during their last year of high school.
