John F. Kennedy High School held a ribbon-cutting for its first-ever athletic field this week, giving the Fighting Eagles football and track programs a home campus to compete on after six years of traveling for every practice and game. The $5.7 million complex, built on the school's Miles Avenue campus in Cleveland's Lee-Harvard neighborhood, is named Roye Kidd Field in honor of a football coach and educator who spent more than three decades at JFK before his death in 2015.
The project splits its cost between two public partners, with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District covering $3.6 million and the City of Cleveland contributing $2.1 million, according to Cleveland 19 News. JFK moved to its current Miles Avenue campus in 2020, but the building went up without a stadium or running track, leaving student-athletes to travel off-campus for every practice and competition in the years since. The station reports that the football and track teams have had to travel to compete since the school first opened on the new site.
A Coach's Name Returns to the Field
Roye Kidd's name isn't new to JFK athletics — it was previously attached to the football venue at the school's old Harvard Avenue campus, a detail highlighted in coverage of the ribbon-cutting. Naming the new stadium after him ties the fresh facility back to decades of program history even as the school starts fresh on a new site. The Fighting Eagles are scheduled to christen the field with their first true home game in six years on Saturday, hosting Warrensville Heights High School, per the season schedule tracked by MaxPreps. The Eagles enter the matchup looking to rebound from a 1-9 record in 2025, having opened this season against Rittman High School.
Political Hurdles Behind the New Track
Getting the project built wasn't a given. Cleveland Ward 1 Councilman Joe Jones said during the ribbon-cutting that early proposals for the complex met skepticism from officials who initially claimed a running track could not physically fit on the Miles Avenue property. Jones credited Mayor Justin Bibb with helping secure the municipal funding that ultimately overcame those site limitations, a detail reported by WKYC. The Cleveland Metropolitan School District and the City of Cleveland broke ground on the field in October 2024, with major construction starting in spring 2025 ahead of this month's completion.
Part of a Bigger Investment Pattern
The new field builds on a decade-long trend of athletic facility investment in Cleveland high schools. In 2016, the Cleveland Browns and the Haslam family installed a synthetic turf field at JFK's former Harvard Avenue campus, launching a district-wide push that has since funded 17 turf fields across Northeast Ohio. The opening also lands amid CMSD's broader Building Better Futures initiative, a master plan under CEO Dr. Warren Morgan addressing declining district enrollment through school consolidations and facility upgrades, as detailed by Signal Cleveland's reporting on the district's evaluation of its building footprint.
Old Campus Gets a New Life
JFK's former 14-acre site at 17100 Harvard Avenue isn't sitting empty either. The City of Cleveland selected Eagle's Nest Realty Group LLC in 2025 to redevelop the demolished campus into a mixed-use residential and commercial project, with plans calling for 187 multifamily units and 50 townhomes, according to NEOtrans. That redevelopment mirrors a pattern Hoodline previously reported across the East Side, where surplus CMSD properties are increasingly being repurposed for new development.
JFK currently enrolls roughly 619 to 652 students across grades 9 through 12, according to SchoolDigger data, making it one of 37 public high schools operating within CMSD. For a program that spent six years without a true home field, Saturday's game against Warrensville Heights represents more than just a season opener — it's the first chance for JFK students to watch their own team play on their own turf.
