Long Creek High School's Dragons finally have a stadium to call their own. New Braunfels ISD officials cut the ribbon Wednesday on Dragon Stadium, a 9,000-seat venue built alongside a new performing arts center, closing out a construction chapter that began with a rejected bond and ended with hundreds of millions of dollars in voter-approved funding.
The ceremony, held at the Long Creek campus in New Braunfels, brought out NBISD trustees, cheerleaders, dancers, band members and LCHS principal Jonathan Campbell to cut the ribbon on the new performing arts center, according to Community Impact. The stadium and performing arts center were completed as part of the school's Phase 2 reconstruction, funded through the district's 2024 bond package, which totaled $313 million. Dragon Stadium itself includes a turf practice field, an eight-lane track, a press box, visitor dressing rooms and concessions, per the outlet's reporting.
A Bond That Almost Didn't Happen
Getting to this point took longer than district leaders originally hoped. NBISD voters rejected a $20.1 million bond proposition in November 2021 that would have funded a varsity stadium for Long Creek High School, even though they approved $327.9 million in other facility bonds that same election, according to the San Antonio Express-News. That earlier bond funded the Phase 1 conversion of the district's Ninth Grade Center, which had been built in 2012 with the long-term plan of eventually becoming a second high school.
It wasn't until May 2024 that voters revisited the stadium question. Proposition B of that year's bond passed with 74.7 percent approval, allocating $40 million specifically for Long Creek's stadium out of a $42.5 million stadium proposition that also funded minor turf upgrades at New Braunfels High School, the newspaper's coverage shows. The NBISD Board of Trustees selected Bartlett Cocke General Contractors as construction manager for the stadium project that September, with Huckabee Architects serving as designer under an agreement that included a 2.49 percent construction manager fee and a 2.75 percent general conditions fee.
Two Years of Borrowed Turf
While Dragon Stadium was under construction during the 2024 and 2025 football seasons, Long Creek High School varsity teams shared New Braunfels High School's Unicorn Stadium for home games, with district staff adding temporary Dragon banners and flags to accommodate the arrangement. That stopgap ends now that the new venue has opened. According to the district website, the LCHS Dragons will compete in a varsity district and will be eligible for UIL football playoffs, with the school fielding its first senior class this year.
Long Creek became the second comprehensive high school in New Braunfels ISD, ending a 178-year stretch in which New Braunfels High School stood as the district's only high school dating back to 1845. The expansion followed rapid residential growth in Comal and Guadalupe counties that pushed enrollment past what a single campus could hold. Students voted to adopt the Dragons as the school's mascot alongside colors of dark green, navy blue and white after officials gathered feedback from middle school feeder students in 2023.
More Than a Football Field
The new performing arts facility includes an auditorium, a band hall, a choir room and a dance studio, giving Long Creek's fine arts programs dedicated space of their own for the first time. At the ribbon cutting, Principal Campbell said the facilities are about teammates becoming family, students becoming leaders and creating lasting memories, adding that the new spaces represent more than just square footage, per Community Impact's account of the event.
Board Secretary Morgan Renaud, who spoke at the ceremony, credited staff, district leaders, community partners, families and voters for making the facilities possible, saying the projects came together through collective effort. Renaud was selected in July to join the Texas Association of School Boards' Leadership TASB Class of 2027, one of 26 trustees chosen statewide for the cohort, according to New Braunfels ISD. Laurelyn Arterbury said the new performing arts center and stadium will give students more opportunities to lead, learn, perform, compete and belong.
Growth Keeps Reshaping the District
The stadium opening lands alongside a string of other investments tied to Long Creek's buildout. NBISD's board approved a $114.68 million operating budget for the 2026-2027 school year, which included dedicated funding for JROTC instructors at the campus, as Hoodline previously reported. That same budget funded 25 new special education positions across the district. To manage shifting attendance boundaries around the new high school, NBISD opened Legend Point Elementary in 2025 as a primary feeder campus into Long Creek.
Taken together, the ribbon cutting marks Long Creek's full transition into a four-year comprehensive high school, complete with varsity playoff eligibility, fine arts programming and the elementary feeder infrastructure needed to support it. For a district that spent nearly three years working out how to pay for a stadium, the Dragons now have a home field, a stage and a senior class to fill both.
