Future of baseball, football fields discussed

By Randy Mitchell

The future of the Allen Mustangs baseball field was discussed at the Allen School Board meeting held December 10^th .

Not only the short-term future of the field, but also the long term. As it is now, the baseball field and the football field are combined. The football field serves as the outfield for the baseball field.

Allen High School Principal Tony Wellington delivered administrative reports to the board where he spoke on the matter.

Wellington said he asked baseball coach Stephen Caldwell to get an estimate of what it would cost to improve the baseball field by bringing it level with the football field, rebuilding the infield and having it ready to play. The estimate was a little over $25,000.

“I do not plan on doing this, unless you tell me you want to do it,” Wellington said. “It’s a whole lot more than I thought it would be. When I told him to get that estimate, I wanted to see what somebody would charge us for that. We need to figure out kind of what direction we want to go with the baseball field, or how long we’re looking at keeping it here, or maybe starting toward moving out there (next to where the softball field is located).”

However, Wellington said he could get the field ready to play on in the spring for less than $5,000. He recommended that the system spend as little as possible right now and concentrate on repairing the infield.

Board member Jami Rinehart agreed something needed to be done, saying, “We didn’t even get to host any games last year.”

“We gotta play on it,” Wellington said. “We’ve gotta play on it this spring. We can do that for minimal cost. It will take a little effort, but it won’t be that bad. I’ve worked on baseball fields all my life, and we can do that without it being (too expensive).”

Wellington said playing last year cause a lot of damage.

“When we came in there and tore it up last year, when we tore the football field up, the grass on that infield died. There’s no Bermuda grass basically on that infield, and, you’re not going to get any grass back on it right now.”

Wellington said if they sod it now, the sod won’t take root.

“We can go in there, till it up, level it up, smooth it up, really seed it heavy with championship blend rye grass for the winter, and have a really nice infield to play on come springtime. And then we can choose to go ahead and rye grass the football field, the outfield part, or not. Either one will be okay. It will look better if you did.

Wellington said it will cost a little more money, but it will look a whole lot better.

“Basically what we need to do to it is go in there and till it up,” Wellington said. “That infield, we need to take it down some, because it’s quite a bit higher than the football field. I don’t care if it’s a little bit higher, but it don’t need to be as high as it is. Till it up, take it down, take some of that dirt out to left field, some of it out to right field and kind of blend it in a little bit.

Wellington said the goal is to have both fields level.

“So that’s the direction we’re headed with it,” Wellington said. “We can come in this summer, after we get through with baseball and we’ll need to top dress that football field, because we played on it when it was pretty wet, and it’s kind of rough right now. We need to top dress it with sand. There’re spots where it’ll take quite a bit, but if we do it when we’re through with the spring baseball, that Bermuda grass will have plenty of time to come back through that. Then we’ll have a nice football field by fall.”

Board member Jason Watkins asked if the longterm plan is to eventually get the baseball field out with the softball field.

“That’s what I would like to see happen,” Wellington answered. “We need to build a baseball field out there. Get it off the football field.”

Watkins asked if anyone had “put a cost together” of what it would take to build a new baseball field near the softball field.

“Not totally,” Wellington said. “I can tell you it’s going to (cost more than the softball field). The lights alone are going to cost $250,000 probably.”

However, Wellington mentioned a cost saving measure.

“We can take three of these poles (from the current fields), this is what Shawnee Lighting told me when they were down here a couple of years ago, we can take three (poles and) lights off of that, and really you’d only need one more. And they can do that. Obviously, there’s a cost to that, but it would be cheaper than all new lights. The major cost of a new baseball park will be lights.”

Watkins voiced his concern about the importance of a long-term goal.

“I guess I would just be concerned (about) capital down the road; we continue to tear the football field up, tear the baseball field up every year,” Watkins said. “(Don’t we need) to, at some point, look out and say five years down the road, we need to be here? That way, you can fix the football field, you can put bleachers on both sides of the field.”

“Absolutely,” Wellington said. “That’s what we’ve gotta do is develop a long-term plan for what we want to do with our facilities here and start working toward that goal. And obviously, they will change a little bit. But we need to set a plan in place to make that happen, if we want to make that happen at some point and time.”

Wellington said a new baseball field could be constructed over time, versus all at once; dirt work first, then fencing, etc.

“You can do that little at a time,” Wellington said. “Where it doesn’t cost you a ton of money at one junction. Kind of work toward that goal and have you a really, really nice park. If that’s where you guys want to go, we need to start planning to make that happen.”