Friday Night’s Brightest Lights : Football: Recent renovations and vigilant care by attentive staff make Chaminade High’s shining stadium one of the area’s best facilities.

WEST HILLS — You won’t see any blimp shots from high above the football field at Chaminade High. But when the lights go on for tonight’s Mission League game against Bishop Montgomery, the view from the ground will be pleasing just the same.

Chaminade’s stadium, constructed in 1988 and renovated this summer at a cost of $250,000, is the Taj Mahal of area high school facilities.

Last week, the school cut ribbon on new bleachers on the visitors’ side, increasing the stadium’s seating capacity to 2,900. Immaculate concrete and aluminum grandstands frame a pristine playing field that is pampered and painted before each Eagle home game.

“Our whole thinking here is: If we do something, we do it well,” said Father Allen DeLong, the school’s president. “We ask kids in the classroom to produce good work and turn in good projects. We want to [emphasize] that same commitment with athletics.”

The proof is in the painting.

Groundskeepers devote 14 hours each week to detailing the field, using about 30 gallons of water-based spray paint. In addition to bright white yard lines, sidelines and hash marks, four-foot-high numbers are painted at 10-yard intervals using cardboard stencils.

The school’s nickname, in school colors of navy and orange, is painted onto the grass in the end zones. Narrow orange and navy stripes border the field.

Bright orange goal posts are hugged by blue protective pads that bear the school nickname.

Leaving no touch unfinished, a snazzy school insignia is spray-painted at midfield, using a nine-piece plastic stencil assembled like a jigsaw puzzle.

The field also is detailed for soccer matches, and groundskeepers have even begun to dabble in painting areas of the baseball diamond.

“We like to do the best we can,” said Rick Leach, physical plant director at Chaminade since 1983.

Without question, most area playing fields pale in comparison to Chaminade’s. But all this fuss over a high school football field?

Well, consider that for years Chaminade had no field to fuss over.

Chaminade, which opened in 1952 in Cheviot Hills, moved to its 20-acre West Hills site in 1962. But for years, the school’s football team played its home games during the day at Chaminade’s middle school campus in Chatsworth, or at night at Pierce College.

Things changed dramatically with the construction of the West Hills stadium, in which the school has invested about $800,000.

Plans for a snack bar, additional restrooms, an all-weather track and additional painting of structures are under consideration, Leach said.

“The reason our boosters wanted to build this stadium is because we used to have to go begging for a field somewhere,” Leach said. “There was a real feeling that the school is successful academically, and we wanted to bring the athletic program up to the same level.”

Whether or not the posh digs are responsible, the Eagles’ football fortunes are soaring. Chaminade has qualified for the playoffs six of the past seven years and won a Mission League title in 1992. This year the team is 6-0 and ranked seventh in the area by The Times.

“The impact on school spirit by having the home games here. . . . there’s no comparison to the spirit and number of kids attending the games before,” Leach said.

It doesn’t hurt morale among employees, either.

Groundskeeper Antonio Jaurejue, who does the majority of painting, considers the task his favorite weekly chore.

Does he think of himself as an artist?

“No,” Jaurejue said, applying finishing touches to the midfield insignia. “I just like painting around here.”