After lacing up her cleats, a softball player steps onto the brand new field for the first time. A new facility for the team to share their love for their ball game. The fresh turf sinks down as she walks across the field taking in the view of her new home field.
Starting five years ago MCHS has been updating all of their athletic facilities to make not only their athletes able to train regularly but also to help maintain the clean look that MCHS prides their athletics in.
“The softball fields were kind of an extension of our efforts to revitalize all of our athletic facilities,” Director of Facilities, Hugh Flack says. “We did a complete assessment of all of our athletic facilities, and we looked at how we could repurpose, redesign them, so that we could get more kids involved and have as much available space for athletics as possible.”
Even though it seems like the softball fields are now getting the rework that the rest of the facilities have gotten, this has actually been in the works for longer than most people realize.
“The first meeting I was in was two to three years ago,” Head Coach Mikaela Mitsch says. ”So a long time, We waited for baseball to be done first but I was still involved in those meetings.”
Not only does construction require concrete and many long days of work, it also requires many creative ideas.
“The design process was really fun!” Mitsch says. “I’ve played on a lot of ball fields throughout my career, so you can tell what fields are your favorite and which ones I hate. It was exciting to be able to come up with new ideas or spin offs of our favorite fields. We hope it works out! It has also been awesome to watch it grow.”
The work for the new field comes from many different places but all of them have the same idea in mind, the athletes.
“Coach Mitsch and I really through some of the things that we wanted to see to make the in-game experience for our girls a little bit better,” Assistant Coach Matthew Conner says. “And so Coach Mitch really focused on, what does the benches look like, what does the field type look like? How does it feel? What does the flow look like in the bench and the dugouts to the batting cages or not batting cages to the bullpens, and how that flow is really going to help us as coaches stick better with the student athletes, and it’s going to really make it so that the student athletes feel like they have and they’re at and playing in a stadium, which gives it a lot more feel.”
As the construction slowly comes to an end, the softball girls will soon be able to step into their brand new field. Fans and athletes will soon be able to enjoy the upcoming season in a brand new way.