Company Donates Labor for Baseball Upgrades
March 6, 2019
The boy’s baseball team raised thousands of dollars to construct new cages, a fence, a larger back-stop net, and backstop padding over the last 6 months.
While the construction is expensive, the team had plenty of help from friends and family. Varsity baseball player sophomore Justin Liang said, “I think [Coach] Max originally wanted it, but 1 of the players at Campolindo, his dad is the owner of a building company and he basically helped bring all of his guys and build the field.”
Sophomore Daniel Wheeler is that player.
Originally, the team had planned on having 12 volunteers do the work. “Instead, [we] used people who have actually been on job sites before,” he said. His dad, who works for Turner Construction, was able to bring in both the experienced workers and the machines for them to use.
“He loves the school, and he wants to make it better,” added Wheeler.
They began building the new cages at the beginning of summer. Liang said, “Now that we have baseball cages, we have like 3 different sections in there, there’s more range of things we can do in there especially because it’s turf. It doesn’t get as wet and rainy days we can still work.”
The help from Turner Construction cut down costs. However, the team still had to raise thousands through a fundraising website. According to varsity senior Will Weaver, each member of the team had a goal of getting $525 for the new additions.
Although the construction has continued through the start of the spring season, Weaver said they were “not really affecting our practice because it’s been raining and we haven’t been able to use the field anyways.”
In fact, Weaver is most looking forward to “honestly, just playing on the field again.”
The additions are part of a years-long effort to update the current baseball fields. Last year, the team built a fence that catches stay balls.
“Most of our money goes to buying new baseballs so [the fence] will save most of them and our budget should be lower,” said Weaver. According to Weaver, the team spent about $5,000 a year on new baseballs.
Wheeler said the stray balls could make their way into the parking lot, and on 1 memorable occasion, hit someone so hard on the head they were concussed.
Next year, planned improvements include a batter’s eye and a berm, which is an elevated strip of turf fans can sit on to watch the game. Altogether, they will cost the team approximately $3,000.
