Batter Up: In Comes A New Softball Field

After planning for a while, the school council and administration have decided to update the softball fields. Construction has been started and is expected to finish before the softball team’s first home game on March 23, 2023. The construction has been funded by a facility bond which was passed a few years ago.
At the Varsity Softball field, new bleachers, restrooms, and field lights are being installed. The field work on the JV softball field is to give the girls protective dugouts and bleachers.
Coach Tapia looks forward to his girls’ performance improving with this new field.
“The JV field was old and very outdated. It was important to update this field to keep our program competitive. An updated field will give the younger players in the program a sense of pride and ownership. When players feel good and look good they play better!” Tapia shares.
The teams and coaches hope to experience some new fan love as there will be expansion of seating capacity in the stadium bleachers.
“The new atmosphere of games should be improved because the fans and community will be excited to experience the new stadium. Expanded seat capacity should make some games more exciting because more people will fit in the stands,” states Coach Tapia.
Players also look forward to the new changes happening out on the field.
“I love to play under the lights… the excitement of [playing under the lights] would make any softball player want to experience that.” junior Khamara Dement states.
“[It’ll be] a fresh start on a new field,” senior Marissa Vasquez says.
Vasquez shares she’s glad the field is being updated, upcoming future players won’t have to worry about a field that wasn’t up to standard with other schools’ fields.
Concerns of the previous field were that they were not equivalent to the boy’s baseball fields.
“The boys had lights and better bleachers. We didn’t have any of that so our games had to be earlier in the day. We couldn’t have [any] night games due to us having no lights,” Vazquez expresses.
“Adding lights to the varsity field will allow us to play night games. Playing at night always adds some excitement and intensity to games and it allows more fans to get to the game because they are off work by that time,” Tapia expresses.
It is expected with these new changes being implemented on the softball fields that they will finally be equivalent to the baseball facilities.
It is a long wait till the field is completed however, and players cannot wait to do so. It will be long twelve-away games that will be played by the players before they are scheduled to have a home game.
The addition of a game ready JV field will also potentially help the program run a JV tournament one day soon.