Photos by ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

William Fleming High School players run onto the field for the first football game ever on the campus of the Roanoke school.

Graduates from 1985 to 1988 gather together for a tailgate party outside the new stadium before the game Friday. The organizer formed a group on Facebook to spread the word.

ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

William Fleming High School fans filled the bleachers for the first game at the school's new stadium Friday. The Colonels lost, 14-6. See Sports for more coverage of the Fleming game and other high school football games around the region.

The telltale clues at Friday night's football game, the first of its kind, included the mid-1980s graduates who crowded a corner of the school's parking lot in an impromptu class reunion.

One woman flew with her husband from Texas and some people wore T-shirts that showed their Colonel pride by saying, "Fleming born, Fleming bred, When I die, I will be Fleming dead."

On Friday night, 77 years after William Fleming High School opened its doors, the Colonels played their first football game in a stadium they could call their own.

It was a moment of significance because it had been in the works since before the long-loved Victory Stadium was demolished in 2006 and because it required an ever-elusive agreement from the city council and the school board.

"We were always overlooked, but we were proud of this school and we loved this school," said Lynn Ferguson Schiller, a 1986 graduate who lives in the Austin, Texas, suburbs. "The kids in this neighborhood deserve this."

The Colonels shared fields with Roanoke's other high school, Patrick Henry, until Victory Stadium was demolished. For a year, the sports teams from both schools traveled to play their "home" games outside the area.

In the fall of 2007, Patrick Henry's Patriots got a new stadium, so the Colonels traveled to Southwest Roanoke to play their games there.

In the meantime, Roanoke City Public Schools announced a $61.1 million project to build an entirely new William Fleming High School, including its stadium. Students moved there in fall 2009.

On Friday, dignitaries, school employees and former coaches met to cut the symbolic ribbon at the new field. Some graduates snapped photos with former coaches.

"This should be self-motivating" for the team, said George "Killer" Miller, the legendary coach who got his moniker because as a student "I took out all opponents."

On a grassy patch by Ferncliff Avenue, several dozen graduates from 1986, '87 and '88 met because one of their own was being inducted into the school's inaugural hall of fame. They came from other parts of the city, the state or the country.

Some of them remembered they smoked in a designated school area (no smoking age had been established) and after Friday night football games they would go to a restaurant on Williamson Road called Johnny's Tavern, which became Scooch's and is now a Bank of America.

"I cried when they demolished Victory Stadium," said Wendy Spangler, a 1987 graduate who is now a labor and delivery nurse in Roanoke. "Some people from work who are from out of the area were asking me why I cared so much about an old building, but they just didn't understand."

The inductee that the 40-somethings came to see, Benjamin Barnett, class of 1986, was an all-district football player and wrestler who became the captain of the U.S. Military Academy's football team.

"The stadium is great and at the same time I'm envious," said Barnett, who is the pastor of Atlanta Metropolitan Church.

Before the game against Lynchburg's E.C. Glass High School started at 7 p.m., the graduates and other fans helped fill the 3,100-seat stadium almost to capacity. They watched the Colonels emerge from their locker room and plow through a paper sign that read "Rock the Blue."

Then, for the first time, the Colonels kicked off on their own turf.