MINERAL RIDGE — The Weathersfield Board of Education recently approved the construction of a $40,000 softball field at Mineral Ridge High School.

Construction is set to begin this fall.

The district is planning to install the new softball diamond in an open field next to the baseball and football stadiums. The field formerly was home to tennis courts and since has been used as a practice area for several teams.

“It basically will begin after the baseball field, in the right field,” Superintendent Damon Dohar said.

The new field will solve several issues the softball team has been dealing with for years.

The current field the softball team has been using is at Seaborn Elementary. Athletic director Jen Stith said the district wanted to have all of its varsity teams playing at the high school campus.

“We’re trying to get everyone all on the same page and for the district to be in the same place,” she said. “It really is an amazing place when you have a baseball game going on, a softball game going on and track meets up there, it really is good for the community and good for school spirit.”

Outside of being a boost for the community, Stith said the softball fields location at the elementary campus has been a logistical nightmare for parents and opposing teams.

“You have to get the girls over there, some of the girls have to drive themselves or parents have to pick them up from school and then take them there,” Stith said. “It also alleviates when we have teams coming in, a lot of times we’re playing the same teams in baseball and softball, especially in our league. They would come to Mineral Ridge to drop off the baseball team and then have to drive to Seaborn to drop off the softball team. It alleviates a lot of that as well.”

Dohar said the field often is in poor condition because of water damage. He said the elevation levels of the Seaborn field often leave it unplayable.

“The elevation over where the current field is at has resulted in the water always flowing in from the right field all the way down into the third base and first base side,” Dohar said. “Every year we’ve had to do something else to try to ease the pain of the water. You don’t even have to have a bad rain and that thing holds puddles.”

Dohar said during particularly wet days in the spring, it sometimes would take 20 to 30 bags of fill dirt to get the playing surface ready. On those wet days, Dohar added, the district not only had to have the softball field at Seaborn ready, it had to have the baseball field at Mineral Ridge ready for play as well.

Driving back and forth, trying to have the two fields prepared for game time put a strain on Weathersfield’s maintenance staff.

“It’s not like we’re the Cleveland (Guardians) here,” Dohar said. “We don’t have 400 groundskeepers, we have one or two. It was everybody on deck.”

Stith said in the worst case scenario, the athletic department would have to cancel games because of poor conditions and an inability to address both fields at once.

Dohar said the idea for constructing the new softball field came to the board’s attention five years ago.

“It was before COVID,” Dohar said. “We were talking about doing it sometime around 2020-21, and then COVID happened and it kind of threw everything away, we didn’t even have softball in the spring of 2020. Of course nobody could work, anyway, so it wasn’t the first thing on anyone’s minds.”

Dohar said the idea was rekindled in recent years. He said with the amount of time the district had to spend preparing the current softball field on a regular basis, they determined funding a new softball field would be a worthy investment.

“It was like, ‘Well let’s try to do this the right way,'” Dohar said. “The main thing was always to try to get things on the high school campus. It was at Seaborn Elementary, which is a wonderful place. We just feel like if we could put it at the high school, that would be best.”

Dohar said construction is set to begin in October with plans for the softball team to grace the new field in the spring.

“All we’re really going to do is carve out the new infield,” Dohar said. “Then we’re going to put the fencing around it. It shouldn’t take too long to get the field part in, and then the fencing part might take a little bit longer depending on weather. Then it’ll be dugouts and all the other stuff. For the first year it might not be perfect, but if we have to phase in all that other stuff, we will.”

With the elevation levels of the new field, Dohar said the water issues that plagued the old field should no longer be a concern.

District Treasurer Steve Haynie said the $40,000 for the field will be paid out of the district’s general fund and capital outlay budget.

Stith said the new diamond will be a big deal for the softball program and the athletic department will be looking at other improvements it can make along with the new field.

“It enables them to have a better playing surface,” Stith said. “It also allows them to be equivalent with Title IX, having as nice of a field as our baseball field. We plan on doing some work to the baseball field as well, at some point.”