The DeKalb County School Board approved the name Seacrest Stadium in December 2025. Gary Lee Seacrest, who pushed for this project for over two decades alongside his son, died six weeks before the vote.
DUNWOODY, Ga.
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Gary Lee Seacrest put more than 20 years into this. A former US Army lieutenant turned Atlanta-area lawyer, he worked alongside his son Ryan and wife Connie to give Dunwoody High School something it had never had: a home football stadium worthy of the community around it. He died in late October 2025, from prostate cancer, at the age of 79. Six weeks after his death, the stadium got a name.
On December 8, 2025, the DeKalb County School Board voted 5 to 2 to officially name Dunwoody High School’s planned athletic facility Seacrest Stadium, honouring the 1993 Dunwoody graduate and Wheel of Fortune host who donated approximately $1 million toward the build.
Seacrest Stadium is a privately funded expansion of the school’s existing field in Dunwoody, Georgia. The project will add 2,000 new seats, a modern press box, and upgraded facilities, bringing total capacity to the 3,000-seat threshold required by the Georgia High School Association for Class 4A varsity play. No taxpayer money is involved. When it opens, targeted for fall 2026, DHS will become the first school in DeKalb County to host varsity football on its own campus.
Why Ryan Seacrest’s Name Is on the Stadium
The connection between Ryan Seacrest and Dunwoody High School is not a celebrity gesture. It is a specific, documented history.
At 16, Seacrest auditioned for the slot to host the school’s morning announcements. He won it, then turned the daily notices into a live morning broadcast, greeting the hallways every morning with “Good morning, Dunwoody!” He called out students, teachers, and parents by name. The school started calling him “The Voice of Dunwoody” — a nickname now written into the official board resolution.
He also played football. Seacrest was a starting defensive back for the Dunwoody Wildcats during the 1992 season, part of the team that won the AAAA Regional Championship. He graduated in 1993.
By then, he had already landed a radio internship under broadcaster Tom Sullivan at WSTR (Star 94) in Atlanta and was working overnight shifts there as a high school student. He enrolled in journalism at the University of Georgia but left at 19 and moved to Los Angeles. In a 2003 interview with Atlanta Magazine, Seacrest named WSB-TV anchor John Pruitt as the person who first made him want to work in broadcast media.
He has stayed connected to Dunwoody since. He made a surprise visit back to DHS in 2021 and posted photos with high school classmates on Instagram as recently as July 2025.
His former science teacher, Roger Gay, who has worked at DHS for 42 years, told the school board at the December meeting that Seacrest once spoke about Dunwoody so warmly on his Los Angeles radio show that he arranged for his co-hosts to fly out to visit the city. Gay helped coordinate it.
What the 5-2 Vote Actually Showed
The result has been reported widely. What has not been explained accurately is the reason behind those two opposing votes.
Board members Diijon DaCosta and Tiffany Hogan voted against. According to Decaturish, which covers DeKalb County school board decisions in close detail, both members supported naming the stadium after Seacrest. Their objection was procedural: the district’s naming policy was overdue for revision, and both felt the vote should wait until that update was in place. Neither voted against the honour itself.
The naming committee, formed within the district, had already voted unanimously to recommend the Seacrest name on November 24, 2025, two weeks before the full board acted. The formal board resolution states the stadium will “recognize the contributions, achievements, and long-standing connection of Ryan Seacrest to Dunwoody High School and the broader DeKalb community.”
Board member Andrew Ziffer, who represents District 1 and brought the recommendation forward, described what the vote meant:
“Despite his national visibility, Ryan and the Seacrest family have remained deeply connected to Dunwoody. Their support of the stadium project represents a full circle moment in which a Dunwoody Wildcat, a DeKalb County student, gives back to the school that helped shape his earliest opportunities.”
The Funding: Where the Money Stands
The Seacrest Stadium project runs entirely on private donations. Here is how the funding breaks down:
- Ryan Seacrest pledged approximately $1 million, kept anonymous until it was confirmed at the December 8 board meeting
- The community group Bring It Home: One Family, One Field is raising a further $1.5 million from local donors, alumni, and businesses
- By December 31, 2025, the campaign had raised over $690,000 of that community target
- Construction will not begin until the full $1.5 million community goal is reached
- Once underway, the build is expected to take 9 to 12 months
- Primary target: open in time for Homecoming, fall 2026
- Secondary window: spring 2027 if the schedule slips
Those looking to contribute can visit bringithomedunwoody.com.
What Seacrest Stadium Replaces, and What It Becomes
Dunwoody’s current field already has artificial turf and lighting. The problem is the seats. At roughly 1,000, the capacity sits well short of the 3,000-seat minimum the GHSA requires for Class 4A schools to host varsity games at home.
That gap has meant years of the Wildcats making the drive south on I-285 to share North DeKalb Stadium with Chamblee High School. On many Friday nights, both programmes play the same venue in the same evening, one game at 5:30 pm with the second behind it.
The planned renovations will end that arrangement. Seacrest Stadium will deliver:
- 2,000 new seats, reaching 3,000 total capacity
- A modern press box
- New restrooms and concessions
- ADA-accessible seating, wider aisles, and improved sightlines
- Updated fencing and landscaping
- A professional sound system
Beyond football, the facility is planned to host flag football, lacrosse, soccer, track events, graduation ceremonies, and school-wide assemblies. DHS would be the first school in DeKalb County with a true on-campus home field, in a county where 19 football programmes currently share just five district stadiums.
DHS principal Tom Bass put it directly after the vote: “Twenty plus years of planning, organizing, and hard work came to fruition last night. Now we all can jump on board the Bring It Home Dunwoody campaign as we celebrate, beginning next year, a new era at DHS.”
The Night the Vote Passed
On the evening of December 8, 2025, while the DeKalb County School Board was meeting in suburban Atlanta, Ryan Seacrest was across the country at the iHeartRadio KIIS FM Jingle Ball in Los Angeles. Speaking to People magazine that night, he said he was not yet sure what his first Christmas without his father would feel like, but that the family planned to keep Gary’s favourite habits going: the Caesar salad he loved to make, a glass of his preferred red wine, and a toast to the man no longer at the table.
On Christmas Day, he posted on Instagram: “First Christmas without Dad, but holding him close in all the ways we can. We miss you. Merry Heavenly Christmas.”
Gary Lee Seacrest did not see the vote. He did not see the name approved, the resolution signed, or the community raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in a matter of weeks. What he left behind was more than two decades of work on a project most people outside Dunwoody had never heard of, for a school his son attended for four years before the rest of the world did.
When Seacrest Stadium eventually opens and the Dunwoody Wildcats play their first Friday night game on their own field, the name above the entrance will be Ryan’s. The years of work behind it were his father’s.
