Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. Superintendent Jim Roberts prepares to throw a ceremonial pitch to celebrate the opening of the Columbus East baseball and softball facility in Columbus, Ind., Tuesday, March 26, 2024.
Mike Wolanin | The Republic
As rain and hail poured over Columbus and a flash of lightning lit up the sky about an hour prior to the scheduled start of Tuesday’s Columbus East baseball and softball season openers, Olympian coaches, players and fans couldn’t help but think how fortunate they were to be about to play on new fields.
Because the new softball complex is all turf, and the renovated baseball field has a turf infield, East was able to play its games. that would not have been the case in previous years.
“It’s definitely super nice, especially tonight since we had rain,” senior softball captain Savanna Sullivan said. “We were still able to play, and on our old field, we would have had to just cancel the game. It’s also nice because for travel ball, you play on a lot of turf, so you just get to kind of get used to it. A lot of high schools are transitioning to turf, so it’s nice not to have to go from turf to dirt all the time.”
East and Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. held a ceremony prior to the games, complete with ribbon cuttings by both the baseball and softball teams on the softball field.
“This has been a long-time coming,” retiring BCSC superintendent Jim Roberts said. “We’ve had a parks department field here, so having their own field is great. Spring time is crazy a lot of times with the weather. This will allow us to play more games. The lights will allow us to go later into the evening. We’re just very excited for the kids here at Columbus East and across the district overall as we continue to make improvements to our facilities. We want to make sure they’re playing at top-quality places that allows them to compete at the highest level.”
While the softball field and its amenities are entirely new, the baseball field underwent a renovation that included a turf infield, new backstop, new scoreboard, new bleachers and press box. The cost for the entire project, which includes new locker rooms, restrooms and concession stand, was $7 million.
“From a funding standpoint, to be able to raise $7 million for these improvements without raising the tax rate is a credit to my staff and Dr. Chad Phillips in particular, our finance guy,” Roberts said.
“There probably cannot be many better facilities in the state of Indiana right now than here with the baseball diamond and what they’ve done to it obviously with this new facility,” East softball coach Rusty Brummett added. “It’s just top notch, top to bottom. The ceremony tonight, I think it was neat to see all those people out here getting the credit that they deserve for getting a facility like this in place.”
The new baseball and softball locker rooms were put to good use when the Olympians took shelter after lightning was spotted before the games.
“We had a lightning delay before the game even started, and for the first time ever, we actually had locker rooms to get our athletes in to stay out of the lightning,” Brummett said. “It’s just little things like that that you don’t think about. They were in there listening to music and being teenagers and having fun.”
