The Fort Lewis College softball stadiums will begin to undergo a $3 million dollar renovation project. This project, which will start this month, is not scheduled to be finished until just before the softball season starts in the spring of 2018.
The renovations will force the softball team to play their home games at Aztec High School for the season. The team will travel to Aztec three hours or so before game time and try to go through its normal routines and traditions as it always would for any other home game, senior Adriana Rosthenhausler said.
“Going a full season without a true home game is going to be taxing,” Elle Fracker, the softball head coach said. “But we are hopeful that we are going to get a nice complex out there and it will make everything worth it.”
Although the renovations are difficult for the softball team, they are not the only team who is affected.
Women’s lacrosse, men’s and women’s soccer, club teams like men’s baseball and many recreational clubs in the city of Durango will all be affected by these renovations over the next year, Gary Hunter, the FLC athletic director said.
The school and the construction company, Colorado Jaynes Construction, will be breaking ground in March. When this happens, all practice and play on the fields will have to cease. The women’s lacrosse team will move over to practice on the new Smith fields when this happens, Julie Decker, FLC head coach of women’s lacrosse said.
This is a major inconvenience for many sports and clubs here at the city and the college, but it is also a necessary evil if a new stadium and complex is to be completed, Hunter said.
The softball renovations will include adding working bathrooms, locker rooms for the softball team and a press box in the middle of the three-field complex, as well as redoing and improving all of the groundwork for the stadiums, Hunter said.
“It is a wonderful partnership and joint venture,” Hunter said. “FLC provides the land and the city provides the finances to go forward with the improvements.”
It is a disappointment for the school, the seniors and the team that they will not be able to play at home in front of their home fans for this season, but the school and the city did exhaust all options when attempting to see if they could play somewhere closer to home instead of in Aztec, Hunter said.
“We explored just about every single possibility that we could, and Aztec ended up being the only field that was available that would comply with NCAA mandates,” Hunter said. “There were some smaller fields, but when you play varsity sports at the NCAA level, there are certain size requirements and that is the best that we could do.”
At the moment, the softball team is doing the majority of its practices in Whalen Gymnasium, Rosthenhausler said.
“It’s hard,” Rosthenhausler said. “We don’t do really any defense or field work. All we do is hit because we have a net in there so the pitchers will pitch live inside the gym and it’s just not the same.”
On its recent trips to Tucson, Arizona and to Canyon, Texas, the softball team’s defense and baserunning was not up to par, and this is directly attributed to the lack of ability to practice on a field, Rosthenhausler said. It is all of the little things that the team isn’t able to refine because of the lack of field work.
The softball team has been trying to do their best no matter what the conditions of their practices or playing fields are, Rosthenhausler said. The seniors are doing their best to guide the underclassmen through this transition from an old, run-down stadium, to having to travel for home games, to ultimately having a brand new complex for next season.
The only way that the school could get a new stadium is to sacrifice this year, Hunter said.
“This will be significantly improved for our students, our fans and our supporters,” Hunter said. “We have to sacrifice this year and then hopefully it will be much improved in future years.”