General | 11/16/2015 2:17:00 PM
ABILENE – ACU has joined forces with AstroTurf to replace the grass and dirt on the baseball and softball fields with new artificial turf. AstroTurf is the originator of the synthetic turf industry, and that will be the turf that both teams will be playing on at Crutcher Scott Field and Wells Field, respectively, when the 2016 spring seasons roll around in a few months.
Crews using road graters, dump trucks and cement trucks have already begun the process of upgrading the playing surface at ACU's baseball facility, and soon they'll begin the same undertaking at the Wildcats' softball facility.
Thanks to a generous lead gift of $500,000 from a Dallas family that serves on the -President's Venture Council, and another $400,000 in other pledges, work began in early November to tear out all of the sod at Crutcher Scott Field and replace it with AstroTurf.
The new turf diamond is part of a major facility upgrade at the venerable stadium, which includes moving the fences in around the entire outfield and adding a home bullpen behind the right field wall. Both the pitcher's mound and home plate area will be turf, and the field will have a traditional baseball field look with a brown turf covering the infield area, pitcher's mound and batter's box where dirt is normally seen on a baseball field.
"This is a game-changer for us in so many ways," said ACU head baseball coach
Britt Bonneau, who will be in his 20
th season at the helm in 2016. "From a coaching standpoint, we will now have a field we can use year-round to do more teaching and coaching. We normally have to take eight weeks off to plant the rye grass that we play on in the spring, but we won't have to do that anymore. Now we can practice longer into the fall and do a few more things.
"From a recruiting standpoint, it puts us in line with some of the top programs in the country," said Bonneau, who played at Oklahoma where the Sooners are also getting a new AstroTurf field this winter. "Kids love playing on this type of surface, and they want to go places where they can get more instruction and more teaching and this helps them do that. Also, by moving the fences in, hopefully we can generate more offense and power in our games, which will allow guys to put up better statistics, the crowds to be more involved and the product on the field to be more exciting to watch."
The new home bullpen will be built behind the right field fence and will be able to be seen by fans through a coated chain link fence that will run the length of the bullpen, and a new pad will cover the rest of the new outfield.
The 2016 season will mark the 25th season the Wildcat baseball program will call Crutcher Scott Field, a fitting time for the facility to receive this kind of upgrade. And it will make it a facility that groups from all over West Texas can use.
"We constantly have teams from all over this area – no matter the league – who want to use our field," Bonneau said. "A lot of those dads – some of whom have no connection to ACU – have helped us fund this turf / outfield wall project. We want this to be a place where kids want to come and play games on because this is something that can have a great economic impact on the city of Abilene."
The turf project is the latest upgrade to one of the finest college baseball facilities in the state, a stadium that was built when the program was resurrected before the 1991 season, thanks in large part to the Al Scott family. A clubhouse in honor of Al Scott and Bill Gilbreth was added 1995, and in 2007 the Bonneau Family Indoor Hitting Facility was added to the complex, giving ACU an indoor facility to use on bad weather days.
"We always want to find ways to deliver a message to recruits and our baseball alumni that we're in this to help young people grow into Christian men and win games," said Bonneau, who is 706-398-1 in 19 seasons as the Wildcats' head coach. "As we approach the 2018 season when we have full membership at the NCAA Division I level, we know we are competing against great universities that are constantly upgrading their facilities. We're very excited to be able to do this upgrade at this important moment in our baseball program's history, and I think it will pay big dividends.
"I want to thank (director of athletics) Lee De Leon and (senior associate director of athletics)
Cory Driskill for their efforts in helping make this project a reality," he said. "Our friends and alums of the baseball program have also played a huge part in this, and we look forward to having everyone out here next spring when we're playing on that state-of-the-art turf surface."
The softball facility will also gain new turf as sixth-year head coach
Bobby Reeves fields what he believes will be his best team yet. The Wildcats will ring in their new turf in style as they will host the likes of Baylor and Texas Tech on the field in its inaugural season.
Wells Field will be part of a new, but growing, trend of softball fields going to a full turf look. The turf will have the look of a natural grass / dirt field with the entire infield area a brown turf and the outfield made to look like grass.
During the off-season, both dugouts at Wells Field were also filled in and leveled to put them at ground level for the first time since the field was built in 1997 Construction crews are set to begin work on the softball field this week with work on both fields scheduled to be finished in January before each team returns from the Christmas holiday break to begin workouts.
Like Bonneau, Reeves already has plans to host numerous high school and junior college games and tournaments, and also has plans to make the field one the community will be able to enjoy.
"This is a fairly new thing for softball," said Reeves, who is 121-142 in his previous five seasons at ACU. "There aren't many schools out there who are going full turf on the softball field, but I think this will be the newest trend in our game. The more our girls have thought and talked about it, the more excited they become.
"We'll be able to get on the field a lot more, and that will be a huge advantage for us," he said. "We'll also be able to host a huge amount of high school and junior college games and tournaments. This will be huge for the city of Abilene, not just for us. A lot of people around town are always calling and asking about using field and facility, and in the past we've had to limit that because of our field situation. Now we won't have to do that as much because it's made to be used."
The softball team will play its first game on the new surface on Friday, March 4, when it hosts the ACU Tournament, a game that will be ACU's 13
th of the season after it opens the season with tournaments in San Marcos, Ruston, La., and Austin.
The baseball team will open the 2016 season at home when it hosts Texas-Rio Grande Valley at 4 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 19, in the first game on the new surface.
