Athletics five-year strategic plan

Note the old 220 yard track oval.

I wished they mentioned about trying to grow baseball at Holy Cross. With the Worcester Red Sox coming to town, baseball should pick up some steam.

Speaking of —

www.milforddailynews.com/story/sports/2021/04/13/worcester-area-producing-many-division-1-college-baseball-players/7204429002/

Men's hockey has reached the NCAA schollie cap? 

^^^Because a softball field doesn't fit within the footprint of a soccer field;  it will fall off the hill,

Really? Football fields and baseball diamonds have been on same fields for years. So no clue what you are talking about.

I am talking about them taking over the football practice field...if softball has to walk all the way down to their field, why can't football if they want to practice on grass?


WPI has a softball field on top of a parking garage, BU and Providence both have field hockey stadiums on top of parking garages. Plenty of creative ideas could be done to get softball onto a turf facility instead of being on a grass field in some empty space.

I don't give a rat's ass about what other schools have done in placing fields on top of parking garages., etc.  The distance between the backstop in softball and the centerfield fence is 275 feet minimum.  the width of a football field is 160 feet.  That's 115 feet shorter.  Where to make up the missing feet?

You can't bite into the competition soccer field, so you'd have to head east, where there is a steep gradient.  The 115 feet in missing lateral distance from where your proposed field is level grade to a future outfield fence is the side of a hill where the elevation drops -- over that 115 feet of lateral distance -- by nearly 30 feet.   Capiche?

Since we know that an upgrade of the video boards are allowed at Fitton, can anything else be substantially upgraded? For example the current locker rooms be extended or rebuilt, without causing either ADA or issues or with the Army Corp of Engineers and the EPA. The locker rooms and the bathrooms do not touch the Stadium superstructure, are they exempt similar ruling to UMass building a new press box at McGuirk.

Onto the topic of the new softball facility, I agree with PP.

It will be physically difficult to build a new stadium at the location being mentioned at the top of the hill. I empathize Stadium, as the new facility should have an modern press box, with a wrap around seating on both the first and third base sides of the field. Each dugout should have sufficient storage for game day operations and a restroom, so the players will not have to go to either a portolet or to the locker rooms that will be built next to the garage at freshmen field while the game is in progress.

A very nice facility, not sub par, can be built on freshmen field without turf, that will have to meet EPA and Army Corp approval. Placing a softball field on top will be a launching pad either against the Indoor Practice Facility or into Quinsigamond Village, with the strong March winds atop Mt. St. James.

The building would have to be ADA compliant to allow for players with a charley horse to navigate it.  BTW, has that medical term "charley horse" fallen from favor?  It was one of my favorites in the sports pages of my youth.

To review, for softball.

FADNP inherited a Title IX consent decree with the Federal government in which certain commitments were made by the college to improve the third-rate softball facility, hire an additional assistant coach, install a scoreboard, and one or two other things,

Substantial improvements were indeed made. (Part of the issue was that the boys play at one of the best college baseball fields in the Northeast, so it is not difficult to draw invidious comparisons.) In the design as built for the Luth, the softball team was not given a dedicated locker room. The mantra that guided the design was that every team was to have its own dedicated locker room.

The intention was to construct a small locker room building between Fitton and Kimball Road, with locker rooms for softball, probably tennis, a locker room for the visiting team in football, and a small medical suite where injured players for either team could be examined and treated.

Softball apparently was given a locker room at the Luth, but I suspect it is shared with visiting teams.

When the strategic plan references improving sub-standard locker rooms, I assume one of those locker rooms is softball's. (I know there are locker rooms in The Jo, but how many, and whether any could be used by a varsity sport, e.g., tennis, I know not.)

As Crucis noted, when deciding on a site for a softball field, it's not just fitting in the dimensions of the field, but also providing space for foul territory, dugouts, bullpens, spectator stands, concession(s), etc. And while football can indeed be played on a baseball field, I have yet to see a baseball game played on a football field.
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On changes to Fitton Field,
The Federal ADA guidelines do allow for modest improvements to the stadium itself, without having to make it fully ADA-compliant. More substantial (meaning more expensive) improvements can still be done without running afoul of ADA if the improvements can be done separate from the spectator seating area. See McGurk. But also see Luth, where improvements to the rink and the Hart court were such that spaces for wheelchairs were installed at both venues, and an elevator was added for access.

So, ADNP's envisioned locker rooms next to Fitton, or improvements to concession stands and restrooms, or lights on stand-alone poles, or field turf, would not require the stadium be made ADA compliant. Widening the field, or constructing a brand new press box integral to the stadium structure, or seatbacks, or replacing the current metal seats, would invoke ADA, and then the college is into the replacement cost of Fitton, which is probably $50 million or more in today's dollars.