Thanks to one of the Pittsburgh Steelers newest players, an area Baltimore school football field is no longer in the dark.
According to Ellen Good of Yahoo, Steelers wide receiver Darius Heyward-Bey is paying for lights to be installed at the football field of his alma mater, McDonogh School in Owings Mills, Maryland.
Up until now, the McDonogh football team has been forced to play their games on Saturdays instead of Friday nights because the field didn’t have lights. The private school was established near Baltimore, Maryland in 1873 and Heyward-Bey played football, basketball, and track when he attended there.
“I had the opportunity when I was 14 to go to school there, and it was the best thing to ever happen to me,” Heyward-Bey told the Good News blog.
Providing lights for his high school football field is something that has been on the mind of Heyward-Bey, the former first-round draft pick of the Oakland Raiders, ever since he was a senior there, according to the McDonogh website.
“We were on the sidelines, and Darrius asked me why we didn’t have lights in the stadium,” recalled McDonogh Athletic Director Mickey Deegan. “When I told him lights were expensive and it would take a very generous gift to make that happen, he put his arm around my shoulders and said, ‘Ms. Deegan, when I go pro I’m going to buy you some lights…because night games are what high school football is all about.'”
According to the reports, the lights should be installed by the start of McDonogh’s 2014 football season.
The Steelers signed Heyward-Bey to a one-year contract a few weeks ago after he spent the 2013 season with the Indianapolis Colts.
