As many of the Horizon Honors students may know, the field has been under construction for quite a while. Many questions have been raised relating to the reasoning behind the renovation, as well as how it will help our school. Horizon Honors has been working to provide us with a new baseball field, which will prove to be beneficial for everyone involved.

Betsy Fera, the school’s Executive Director, said that failing irrigation and retention systems, erosion issues, and the inability to grow grass pushed the school to begin the construction on the field to help address these problems. The addition of a baseball field also provides advantages to the school, as it will expand the physical education curriculum, allowing for greater variety in activities. It will also upgrade the facility for softball and baseball for grades 5-12 and help our school save money. Having access to the field on campus will prevent our school from having to rent fields and provide transportation to get to them. On top of this, it could bring in money into our school because it can to be rented out to other teams and clubs.

Concerning the irrigation and retention improvements, the field will no longer flood as much. When the rain flooded out the area a few weeks ago, it only took a day or two for the water to drain, rather than a week or more as it often used to. Surprisingly, most of the delays on the construction of the field have come from factors other than flooding, such as inspections and other city regulations.

A big factor of getting this project moving was having the money to pay for it. The school has something called “capital reserves,” which is basically a savings account for our school where money is set aside each year for big projects like this one. With the money set aside, our school was able to redo the field, and even has many more unnamed projects planned that will provide many benefits and improvements to our school and student body.

The construction on the field is scheduled to be completed in about two weeks, although it could be be longer before it will be officially opened for use—estimates range from three weeks to three months. After the construction is done, they will have to put sod down, which may take a while to settle into the ground. The field will be open for full use by the beginning of next school year, and we are excited to take full advantage of it.