Other facts about Gilroy…

• In 2002, more than 30 years after its glory days, the dilapidated dumping ground was finally condemned. The park department does allow the field to remain in use for a handful of minor events each year but the stands and concourse are supposedly off limits.
  
• During its heyday, Gilroy was more than just a stadium for the city’s football teams. Other events held there included pep rallies, homecoming ceremonies, fireworks shows, political rallies, concerts, religious events and more. City wide track meets were staged there for a time as well, before moving to schools with paved tracks. But it was high school football that ruled at Gilroy.
  
• Gilroy never hosted a state tournament game. The first year of the tournament, 1973, was the last year Gary schools used the field.
  
• Semi-pro football has been played there since the 1970s. For many years, the Gary Golden Bears were the stadium’s main tenant, having used the field for the better part of two decades. Most recently, the Gary Wolfpack semi-pro team had been calling Gilroy home.
  
• The scoreboard was last known to work in the 1980s.
  
• Sometime during the late 1990s, a storage room floor on the west side of the concourse caved in.
  
• A Klu Klux Klan rally was held there in 2002.
  
• Punt, Pass and Kick still takes place on the field, but because the stands are condemned, two small wooden bleachers had to be set up for fans. A third bleacher sits there unfinished.
  
• An amateur baseball field was opened behind the stadium in 2005, literally in the shadows of Gilroy’s rotting light towers on what was formerly a dirt parking lot.

What was supposed to happen but didn’t:

• Originally, Gilroy was to be part of the South Gleason Park Athletic Complex. The plan called for tennis courts to the west and a baseball stadium to be built on the northwest side of the football stadium. The tennis courts were eventually put in but the trees where the baseball diamond was to be located were never cleared and are still there.
  
• Bleachers were to be built on south side of the grounds with room for up to 5,000 fans, plus bathrooms and concession stands. Plenty of space was allotted but this phase of the project was never started.
  
• Offices, additional locker, training and maintenance rooms on the lower level of the bleachers were never completed.
  
• Gilroy was slated to have an eight-lane, paved running track put down around the football field. The track was put in but never paved. Today the track is still cinder (actually its rocks and weeds).
  
• The parking lot to the north of the stadium, with room for 2,600 automobiles, was never paved.

What did happen…

• According to the Post-Tribune, 630 tons of steel were used to construct the bleachers. Conversely, Lambeau Field used 11,000 tons, yet still cost less to build.
  
• According to one source, US Steel donated the steel used in the construction of Gilroy Stadium. No documentation can be found to substantiate the report but according to US Steel officials, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
  
• The original target date for opening Gilroy was September 2, 1955 but due to a later than expected start date and several construction delays, the job actually took another 365 days to complete.

Jack Gilroy…

Jack Gilroy, for whom the stadium is named, must be rolling over in his grave. It’s unfair to associate a man who did so much for the youth of the city with this wreckage from the past.

• Gilroy was responsible for starting the interscholastic athletic programs in Gary. He also served as the first head football coach and athletic director. Gilroy was known around the city for taking young kids under his wing and mentoring them.
  
• Former daughter-in-law Edna Gilroy Smith described him as a person of great vision. “He saw the potential of Gary from the very beginning,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine what sports in the city of Gary would have been like without him.”

Tolleston Field
    
Perhaps the most unique aspect of this quaint neighborhood field is its proximity to everything around it – traffic, the parking lot, the homes across the street, the school building itself.   
    
Life was never better in the Steel City than it was in the 1950s and the enthusiastic crowds at Tolleston Field reflected the vibrancy and diversity of the ever changing metropolis.
    
Back then six of the city’s eight high schools were located less than five miles from where the games were played, making for some great intercity rivalries.
    
For bigger games, a lack of available seating would become an issue and often led to fans gathering around the playing field or outside the fence, offering the impression that a much larger crowd was on hand.
    
When the other schools moved into Gilroy Stadium in 1956, the Blue Raiders stayed at Tolleston, but the others continued to play there when Gilroy was booked. Changing times in the city of Gary meant Tolleston Field wouldn’t be around forever.
    
Several serious altercations occurred during and after games in the 1960s where fans of the visiting team were beat up or harassed. One incident in which four Hobart fans were beaten and taken to the hospital in 1967 prompted Tolleston’s remaining home games to be played in the afternoon. Newspaper accounts of the game say no student fans were in attendance at two of the games. In an effort to curb the violence, Tolleston’s 1968 home schedule was slated for Gilroy.    
    
By the mid 1960s schools outside the city were looking to get Tolleston off their schedule and by the late sixties it merged with Edison to become West Side.
    
Some of the better known players who honed their skills on the Tolleston gridiron include Alex Karras, Freddie Williamson, Denny Cavanaugh and Rich Ramirez.
    
Tolleston ceased to be a high school at the end of the 1969 school year.

Today it’s a middle school. The old football field is still there and the faded yard lines can still be seen from the Google satellite map.

THE RISE AND FALL OF GILROY STADIUM

GREAT GAMES AT GILROY

"GILROY WAS HERE" VIDEO