By:JOSEPH KELLARD
The school district is making plans for the reconstruction of athletic fields at OHS and the middle school, an undertaking that is part of a district-wide, multi-million-dollar capital-improvement project.
There-s a lot of stuff that-s going to be going on, and I-m depending on greater minds than my own to figure out just how we will approach this, said Assistant Superintendent Lou Frontario, who oversees the district-s construction projects. Of course, we-re depending on [Athletic Director] Dave Zawatson to make some recommendations to see what we can do.
Among the projects at OHS are the replacement of the irrigation systems on the football and soccer fields, the refurbishing of the girls- softball infield with èdrainage and clay, and the installation of lighting. At OMS, all the athletic fields will be reconstructed, including the addition of new sod on the football field and new soil on the baseball and softball infields.
At this point, district officials said they believe the best plan is to first redo half the targeted acreage at the high school and middle school, then reverse this process, so as not to tie up one school-s fields completely. How it actually falls out, I-m not exactly sure, Frontario said. It might be a little dicey. We might have to play some games where we normally wouldn-t play them. Frontario added that these two major projects are likely to be completed in 2006.
Frontario speculated that work on the OHS footbaÄll field would likely begin after graduation next June, and added that he doubted the district would look for another venue for graduation, which traditionally takes place on the field.
Once the new field is installed, it will take many months for the sod to settle properly. Officials will need to figure out where teams affected by the projects will play their games. For example, we did all the field work at School 8 over this past summer and fall, and we might be bringing that into service, said Frontario. We have been off that field since May. So, we went all summer without any sports programs there. Finally we got all the irrigation and sod down, and the goal posts are coming in this spring. Ä... We-re going to move some activities there.
The school board included the reconstruction of the fields in its district-wide $28.6 million building-alteration-and-improvements project which also includes upgrades to school roofs, windows, ceilings and floors and the construction of new classrooms at OHS and OMS that the community voted to approve in January 2003.
Is it an inconvenience? Frontario asked rhetorically about the field projects. Yes. But we have to bite the bullet and do these fields at some point in time. We want to make it as logical and viable as possible. And we don-t want our kids to suffer.
Comments about this story? DMiller@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
