Oak Harbor football fans found themselves in an odd situation at Friday night’s game against Arlington.

Instead of sitting behind the home team, they were left sitting on the visitors sideline staring at a set of condemned empty purple and gold bleachers.

“I had one that graduated in 2001 and we’ve always been there on that side of the field, so it’s a little strange,” football parent Nancy Brown said.

The Oak Harbor School District moved in three sets of 500-seat aluminum bleachers along with a smaller set of bleachers to the visitors side of Memorial Stadium to accommodate both the home and away teams. The leased bleachers cost the school district $17,000.

Putting aside the oddity of sitting on the opposition sideline, Brown and many others were just happy that they got to watch football at the stadium.

“We’d like to give a big thank you to Dr. Schulte (superintendent of schools) for arranging seating for us,” she said. “It’s unfortunate you know, the sad thing is that we’re not on the side of our boys. The alternative is that we don’t play here. It’s just a blessing.”

Football parent Gary Wandell was happy to be watching the game at home, but doesn’t believe it should of come down to this.

“I just don’t like it because we’ve been trying to pass the levy for so stinking long,” Wandell said. “We go out and we tell people to vote, but with all these old farts around here nobody will vote for the levy so we can get a new stadium.”

Wandell also isn’t entirely happy with the current seating arrangements. After watching a junior varsity game from the new bleachers he spoke of problems between opposing fans.

“We had to sit with the other parents from the other team and there was some confrontation just because we’re all sitting next to each other,” he said.

There was a heavy presence of school officials and members of the Oak Harbor Police Department on hand for Friday night’s varsity game to make sure peace was kept.

Oak Harbor head football coach Dave Ward was pleased with the way most everything went, however, he did notice a slight difference.

“We didn’t have as many fans as we normally would, I don’t think,” he said.

Despite the possible smaller attendance level, Ward and his team were able to focus on the task at hand Friday with a 42-13 win over Arlington.

“I felt like it was good to be back on our field, the guys responded well,” the coach said. “The field’s in good shape and that’s the main thing for us. It’s an inconvenience to a lot of people, but it works for the team.”

Friday’s game was the first varsity football contest to take place at Oak Harbor’s home field since the team played Monroe Nov. 1 of last year. The Wildcats were forced to move a scheduled home playoff game to Everett due to safety concerns and the field condition at Memorial Stadium.

Oak Harbor will play their next home game at 7 p.m., Friday, Oct. 10 against Snohomish.