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Ram Stadium will be receiving an upgrade for the football season with new lighting that will include brand new LED lights.

Most of the lights that were previously in Ram Stadium had been there since 2001, so the Chambers County Board of Education decided to invest in long-term lighting for the stadium.

The lights will be a major upgrade for the stadium, and they’ll add to the entertainment factor.

The cost of the new lights will be $287,000, with funding coming with a ten-year warranty available through a 2020 refinanced bond to support maintenance and upgrades for the district. That cost doesn’t include taxes, labor, installation and the unloading of the equipment. There will be a total of 66 new lights installed with 12 being color-changing. They’ll also include technology that will optimize visibility for the players.

Chambers County School District Superintendent Casey Chambley and the school board hired Musco to install the new lights.

“They’re going to blink and change colors and flash,” Chambley said. “We talked to coach [Adam] Hunter about it. It was more for us to be able to do something for our athletes and for our community.”

Chambley also mentioned that the lights will be on a timer so people at the sportsplex can see early in the morning.

“We had several lights go out last year,” Chambley said. “We had to replace those. This April, we noticed at one of our soccer games that we had about 25 or 26 lights out on four different poles. We knew we were going to have to look at replacing those.”

Over the years, the lighting deteriorated with some lights going out and some just getting dimmer.

“There’s been a lot of issues where the film of the glass of the light accumulates moisture and you either have to change it or clean it,” Chambley said. “A lot of them had that, and it was dimming the field. We knew we needed to do something about it.”

The school district chose to install new LED lights instead of just replacing the lights that were out.

“We got a contractor out to look at replacing lights,” Chambley said. “The board decided that we were going to have some trouble getting the older lights. We’re definitely going to have trouble getting those same lights in the years to come since everything is going to LEDs. The board looked at a complete upgrade and how much that would save us instead of going to the old halogen lights. We thought it would be best to do a complete light upgrade.”

The board chose Musco because of the other lighting projects they’ve completed throughout Alabama.

“They just finished an upgrade at Russell County with their new football facility,” Chambley said. “They’re doing an upgrade at Central Phenix City and at Auburn High. They’re a very reputable group, so we felt like that was the way to go.”

The project started in the spring, but they began installation of the lights this week.

“We had to go through a bid process and work with engineers from Montgomery,” Chambley said. “We worked with Musco. They had to order the product, but Musco builds all of their lights.”

They hired an electrical company out of Columbus to install the lights, and they’ll be done in the next two weeks.

“Part of the deal was they had to be ready by the time Valley plays their first game,” Chambley said.

The lights will be showcased during Valley’s first home game against Beauregard on Sept. 2.