There are quite a few welcomed improvements happening to the city of Jefferson owned softball fields.

The Greene County School District has a sharing agreement with the city to play its high school softball games and Superintendent Brett Abbotts says one noticeable change is going to be new batting cages. He explains that the area where the old batting cages were located, directly behind the pressbox, are now going to be placed past the right field fence.

“Big thanks to the city of Jefferson for the work that they had done (and) tore out a concrete pad for us that was there. So we’ll have to get that regraded. We’re working with Dennhardt Concrete there to come in and they’ll do the final grading, get the concrete poured, and then communicate with the company that we’re using for the batting cages. We’re anticipating those will be up and available for the beginning of the season.”

Abbotts notes that the reason for the change in location of the batting cages was due to the dimensions of the new cages being bigger and wider to provide the appropriate sized batting cages for the high school team to use. He reveals the other big ticket item was the new scoreboard that was purchased last year but was recently installed after a few delays. Abbotts describes another improvement that will not be done before the season regarding the lip that exists between the infield and outfield.

“We decided that the damage that it would do to the turf would take too long to repair before the season could start. So, as soon as the season is finished we will go ahead and do the process. We’ll get that cut down, and get it all nice and smoothed out, and re-grown, and have a nice sharp looking infield there.”   

He adds that other things are being done to the field before the high school softball season starts including addressing the irrigation system, installing a new home plate and pitchers mound, and realigning the rest of the bases. Abbotts says the scoreboard was about $13,000 and the batting cages and concrete pad was about $35,000, with both items purchased through Physical Plant and Equipment Levy and/or sales tax fund.