Building Proper Homes for Softball & Track

By David Holahan
originally printed in the Spring 2019 issue of Views from the Hill

$2.7M Athletic Upgrade Underway

Think musical chairs. Except in place of individuals circling anxiously about, hoping to find a place to sit, substitute an entire sports team. Hopkins Varsity Softball has been playing musical fields for years now: from Parr Field to Far Field and in between. This spring the girls have moved to yet another of their temporary homes, where JV soccer is played.

But not to worry: In 2020 this band of sisters will have a brand new—and permanent—home field, one that will be commensurate with their proficiency and perseverance. (They have gone 10–3 the past two seasons, winning the league championship in 2017 and qualifying for the playoffs both years.) Far Field is now undergoing an extreme makeover: it will emerge as a state-of-the-art and exclusive haven for Hopkins Varsity Softball—and perhaps a JV team, too, if enough girls are inspired to try out.

Ava Pfannenbecker ’21 plays first base and is ecstatic. She and two other players met with Head of School Kai Bynum last spring to lobby for the new field (they were hardly alone in that): “I’m super excited about it, and the fact that he listened to us and we got the new field is huge for our team and for the softball program.”

The new field is one piece of a $2.7 million athletic upgrade that includes a new home for another deserving Hopkins sport: track and field. Girls and boys teams will be able to host home track meets next year—if not for the first time ever, at least in recent memory. Perhaps more important, they will be able to train on a regulation rubberized track surface, as opposed to grass or unforgiving pavement.

The new oval will be a 400-meter track, with eight sprinting lanes and areas at either end for jumping events and the pole vault. It will enable Hopkins athletes to compete in every track and field event and have a shot at winning meets as a team—again for the first time in anyone’s memory.

As matters now stand, Hopkins track and field athletes do not have the ability to practice—and therefore don’t compete in—the following events: pole vault, high jump, long jump, triple jump, and the hurdles. Individually, Hopkins track athletes have done well. Last year, for example, the boys finished second in their division in the 4 x 400-meter relay at the prestigious Penn Relays in Philadelphia.

The project was kick-started by generous and anonymous donations from several families that totaled just over a third of the cost. Construction is underway and fundraising continues.

The softball diamond will sport a regulation, skinned-clay infield, as opposed to uneven grass. Right field will be dead level rather than on an incline; left field will no longer be marshy, and the entire outfield will be graded, well drained, sodded and irrigated with an underground watering system. There will be a scoreboard, a proper backstop and fencing in front of the players’ benches and down the foul lines.

Lauren Gillespie ’20 plays second base, and last year she mastered the bad hops of the makeshift diamond out on Far Field. But she can’t wait to play her last two seasons on regulation softball facilities. “I’m so excited about our new field,” she said. “Everyone is happy we’ll have an official field. It will definitely have an effect on team morale. It will make it more fun. I think getting girls on campus to come out and play will be easier now.” She added, referring to the new 1,000-square-foot storage building that will be located near third base, “It will be nice not to have to lug all our equipment out there every practice.” Not for nothing is it called Far Field, which is at the extreme southwest corner of campus.

“The girls are excited to have their hard work recognized,” said softball coach Angelina Massoia, who added, “Especially because there has been a whole other implication in the past with it being a women’s team and there being a really nice baseball field for the boys; the optics of that are going to improve.”

Hopkins Chief Operating and Financial Officer David Baxter, who is overseeing the project, said, “Our goal was to make sure we were bringing real parity in the quality of facilities for the girls, so we, and our architect, took cues from the boys’ field, including such features as batting cages, bullpens, everything that you would expect to see in a quality facility.”

Head of School Kai Bynum couldn’t agree more. “The softball field made complete sense, to enhance a program that didn’t have a dedicated field on campus,” he said.

Putting the project in the context of Hopkins’ Master Plan, Bynum said: “As we deepen our commitment to academics, we want to balance that out by making sure we have excellent experiences in the arts and athletics. The timing for this project was motivated by the generosity of the community. We had several families saying, ‘We’d like to make this happen right away.’”

It should be noted that Bynum knows more about track and field than your average head of school. He was a varsity track athlete in high school, competing in all three facets of the sport: in running, jumping, and throwing events. Under persistent questioning, he revealed that his best time in the 100 meters was 10.9 seconds.

The new track, under construction now, will be located where track and field athletes have practiced for years, adjacent to the new softball field. It will have a huge impact on the Hopkins Track and Field teams, girls and boys, varsity and JV. It will help female and male athletes to excel in both team and individual competition. Heretofore, Hopkins athletes could not compete in many events or perform in others, like sprints and relays; they were hampered by the lack of a regulation surface to practice on.

“This will definitely be a game-changer for younger runners,” said Connor Hartigan ’19, a senior on both the track and cross-country teams. “We’ve always had to do cross-country style training during track season. When I was on the starting line for the 1,500-meter race during my first track meet, I was still trying to figure out when I would be able to break out of my lane!” He added, “Sprinters suffered especially from our lack of a regulation track to train on.”

Track Coach Michael Christie said that the new facilities will enhance the possibilities for recruiting. He added, “For example, we have a girl who is really good in the long jump and she wants to get better, but we have been at the mercy of our facilities.”

The new track also will be a training, fitness, and wellness resource for participants in other sports, such as cross-country and soccer, and for others on campus who simply want to take a brisk walk around the oval or get in shape for a 5K fun run.

According to Dick Webb, senior principal with SMRT, the architectural firm in charge of the project: “The new sports venues will be very competitive, on par with or better than facilities at most other public and private high schools.”

The 400-meter oval track will have six lanes for distance events, along with eight straightaway lanes for the 100- and 200-meter sprints. “We start producing the track surface with a bituminous pavement base similar to a road or parking lot,” Webb explained. “Then a synthetic surface goes on top of that base, a resilient rubber system that is paved onto the bituminous concrete; and finally color and additional texture are sprayed on to create the final layer.”

The rectangular area inside the track oval will remain grass, where varsity soccer and lacrosse will continue to play. An area inside the south end of the oval will be the venue for the long jump, the triple jump, and the pole vault; a similar space on the opposite end of the oval will be dedicated to the high jump.

Throwing events—the shot put, discus, and javelin—will be held two fields over, between the JV baseball and JV soccer fields.
“Students, parents, and alumni/ae have been lobbying for this for years,” said Rocco DeMaio ’86, Hopkins Director of Athletics. “It came up a lot. I give campus tours all the time and it is always nice to show off what we have here. The new facilities will be a big plus.”

Samantha D’Errico ’20 is a junior and co-captain this year of the Hopkins Softball Team. She will get to compete on a first-class field, at home, in her senior year. And she is fired up about it. She is fired up about having more people try out for the team and maybe even more spectators making the trek all the way out to Far Field to root for her and her teammates.

“Having the new softball field and track is going to be really good for the school,” she said. “It will bring people out to the games and the meets. It will be great for school morale.”

Check out the progress on the new Softball and Track & Field Projects:

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