Washington County Enterprise-Leader
New Cardinal Baseball Field Progressing
Blew, Harper, Higgs, Scrivener Dedicated To Development
FARMINGTON — Mother nature has done anything but cooperate, yet the new Farmington baseball field, home of the Cardinal varsity, is progressing.
“If we had some rain like last year, we’d be all right,” said Jay Harper, Farmington baseball coach.
Harper observed hot spots on the infield while looking over the new facility with Brad Blew, Farmington athletic director, on Thursday.
“The weather’s going to cooperate eventually. Right now, we’re just steadily trying to feed water to it,” Harper said. “We’ve watered something between 9 a.m. and 10 o’clock at night every day.”
Harper and Clint Shriver, Farmington assistant baseball coach, have been faithfully working on the field every day since baseball season ended for the Farmington varsity. The field has been sprayed once every two weeks to keep the weeds down and grass out of the infield.
Harper acknowledged the assistance of Reggie Higgs and the Farmington maintenance staff.
“Reggie and his crew have done a tremendous job,” Harper said. “He’s busy doing other things and he stops to help us.”
The baseball team helped sod the infield and Harper would like to have had them sod the outfield. The projected price tag for that was $25,000 so a decision was made to seed it.
Blew and Harper both wanted certain other things for the field, which have been done. Blew wanted a large net type of backstop.
“That’s one of the greatest things we put up,” Harper said. “The crowd can sit and watch without being behind a fence.”
Harper’s wishes were for the dugouts to be bigger and open and there are other features he’s enthusiastic about like double bullpens on both sides and a scoreboard with a built-in radar gun to measure pitching speeds that will flash the data up on the scoreboard. According to
Harper, the distance to dead center field is 370 feet with measurements of 310 down the lines.
“We still have the wind advantage with the south wind. Home runs will be hit in this ballpark,” Harper said. “We’ve got more storage than we’ve ever had.”
Harper credited the persistent involvement of Blew with helping the field’s development.
“Coach Blew is doing a good job of getting us what we need,” Harper said, noting Blew checks on the field every morning.
“For the most part, the majority of our field is done. There’s some cosmetic stuff left to do. We’ve got to put up our foul poles,” Harper said.
The stands will be brought in after July 1 when the new fiscal year begins.
“We’ve got room to seat a bunch of people,” Harper said. “We want to host as many tournaments as we can including regionals and state.”
Material to be laid down on the warring track will have to wait until winter to be completed because that is an earliest an order will be shipped.
“It will be the same type of stuff they have at Arvest Ballpark,” Harper said.
“We’ve got great dugouts and a great press box, all that’s left is the grass.”
Harper said he was thankful for use of the new city ballfields for home games this past season and said the Cardinals will reciprocate if the city needs access to the new baseball facility.
“We’ve had a great relationship with the city in the 10 seasons I’ve been baseball coach sharing our field with them,” Harper said. “We’re happy to have our own place and they can certainly come up here if they’re having a tournament and they need to use our field.”
As it starts to come together, Harper will be doing double duty with his responsibilities as defensive coordinator for the Cardinal football team. Seven-on-seven begins in July, yet as progress continues on the baseball field, Harper remains dedicated.
“It’s an exciting time for me,” Harper said. “It’s going to be real nice when it’s finished.”