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NILES — A new addition to a local school district was celebrated with much fanfare Wednesday afternoon.

Niles Community Schools officials, teachers, community members and students attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Niles High School’s new synthetic turf competition field at Viking Stadium.

The field, paid for by a combination of generous local donors and sponsors, as well as capital funds, was completed last fall. It will not only be the home of the middle and high school football teams, but also the soccer teams, the band, and other sports, which will be able to hold practices outdoors in the spring when the weather is nice enough for them, but the natural grass fields are still unusable.

The presentation featured speeches from Superintendent Dan Applegate, Niles High School Prinncipal Michelle Asmus, School Board President Mark Wortham and Athletic Director Matt Brawley. Applegate thanked the donors and construction teams that made the project possible: CARMI, Selge Construction, IBID, Ritschard Bros., Custom Fencing, VK Civil, Stephenson Surveying, ATurf, Advance Irrigation, Millies Engineering, City of Niles, E & L Construction and Chorba.