I’m a softball and baseball dad, coach, and Harvard Youth Baseball & Softball Association board member.
Harvard’s town softball and baseball programs need a new field. Our enrollments are at five-year highs—62 boys and 34 girls—and our four fields are fully booked. The school softball program will expand to two teams next year, middle school and high school. That will fully book the softball field on Ann Lees Road, which is inadequate, but Harvard’s only girls diamond.
Next spring, our five town softball teams need a game field … a new expense of $5,000 to $7,000 per year. Sadly, no rentals exist. A “multisport complex” is five to eight years away. Adjacent towns’ fields are booked, the Ryan Land isn’t suitable for softball (converting it displaces baseball), and the Francis W. Parker School contracts Devens’ two game fields.
Two things brought us here.
First, historical data shows town teams send boys and girls into equally sized middle school teams. Why does boys high school baseball thrive, while only two girls play high school softball? Well, our girls “got used to” playing on three subpar sandlots, while our boys enjoyed three well-furnished fields, buoyed by baseball-specific booster money. Recently, two softball fields at HES were paved over and the high school softball team was sent to Ayer Shirley Regional High School, where they all quit. Our girls are still being mocked and shamed by boys. These are symptoms of a larger, but solvable, problem.
Second, after the HES building project paved over two of the three fields used by school and town softball, it scoped a diamond practice field and middle school rectangular game field, next to the HES parking lot. The current “diamond” is a lonely backstop … useless to all. The rectangular field fits under-8 games only, not U10 or U12. Its current value is limited to “aesthetics,” a different, solvable problem.
What now? Because this project still has about $800,000 remaining, the building committee is revisiting a viable diamond for preschool through grade 5 use, plus use for spring softball, with a temporary outfield fence and raisable nets. Our school and town teams could practice there, while using the softball field at Ann Lees Road for games. Using existing space for this modern, central diamond would restore a needed resource.
Our actions deliver a clear message to our kids about athletics and equity.
Toby Bazarnick
Houghton Lane
