A steady rain began to fall in last year’s regular-season softball finale between Columbus East and Bedford North Lawrence, and without dugouts to keep the players and bats dry, East coach Rusty Brummett knew the Olympians needed to upgrade their facility.
That upgrade could come in the next couple of weeks. Above-ground home and visitors dugouts will be installed at East’s varsity field, which is in Clifty Park across from the school.
“Nobody can recruit, but when you look at this facility, compared to what Columbus North has, it’s not the same,” Brummett said. “So we’re giving these girls what they deserve. We’re giving our girls something they can be proud of, something they can own.”
Junior Kendra Pastrick spearheaded the project and designed the dugouts.
The East softball team and booster club has raised most of the funds for the project. Case Construction has donated labor for the footers. Brummett got a quote Tuesday from Marshall West LLC to lay the blocks.
Marshall West currently is working on other projects and can’t start for two weeks. The project should take about a week, which would leave only a couple weeks left in the regular season to use them.
“That’s not exactly what we wanted, but sometimes, progress is a little slower than we would like,” Brummett said.
Since the fields belong to the city, the parks and recreation department is handling the project, rather than the East athletics department. The city and parks department took down the benches and the fence around the teams’ bench areas and had the footers poured prior to the season.
Brummett said every team on the Olympians’ schedule has block dugouts.
“The school and the athletic department have limited funds they can provide,” Brummett said. “With the funding that takes place in athletic departments, the teams have to do a lot of the work to get what they want for their programs.”
Former East assistant picked
Marty Beasley, who spent two years as an assistant boys basketball coach at Columbus East, has been named coach of the Indiana All-Stars.
Beasley is 177-107 with four sectional titles and one regional over the past 12 years at Fort Wayne Carroll. Prior to that, he went 69-65 with a regional title in six years at Garrett.
Beasley was the varsity assistant at East under Ty Platt for two years in the mid-1990s.
“He is renowned for old-school basketball and teaching kids to play defense,” said Chuck Grimes, who was the Olympians’ JV coach at the time. “He has just been fantastic since he got his own program.”
The Indiana All-Stars will play Kentucky June 10 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse and June 11 at Central Hardin High School in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Indiana also will play games against the Indiana Junior All-Stars June 6 and 8 at sites to be determined.
North senior scores 13
Columbus North senior Maliah Howard-Bass scored 13 points Sunday in the South’s 107-96 loss to the North in the annual North-South Indiana All-Star Classic at Logansport.
Howard-Bass made five field goals, including two 3-pointers. She made her only free-throw attempt.
Howard-Bass will play for the Indiana All-Star girls team in June.
Senior named North MVP
Senior Alex King has been selected as MVP of the Columbus North boys basketball team.
Peyton Russell won the Bull Dog Award. Zach Green took the McDonald Mental Attitude Award.
Ethan Mitchell and Stephon Peters-Smith shared the Behrman Big Dog Scholarship. Nathan VanDeventer won the inaugural John Carmichael Memorial Award.
East sets callout meeting
The Columbus East boys soccer program will have a callout meeting for any current eighth- through 11th-grade students who are interested in playing soccer next fall at 6:30 p.m. April 26 in Room 110 (Large Group Lecture Hall) of Columbus East High School.
The coaching staff will discuss the program and provide information about the upcoming summer schedule.
