Discussion begins to restore baseball field lights
NEW CASTLE – Just before baseball and softball season started, the lights came down at Craig County High School fields.
Tonight, Sept. 7, School Superintendent Ronnie Gordon plans to talk with members of the school’s Athletic Booster Club at their regular meeting about what can be done to replace them.
Dustin Smith prepares to fire one for the Rockets in this 2007 file photo.
The lights and poles were a source of pride for boosters, other organizations and individuals who raised money to light the fields which were dedicated in May 1996.
Removal of the lights’ wooden poles – which Gordon, coaches and the Craig-Botetourt Electric Cooperative said were dangerous because several were rotting and others were leaning – is a sore point for many people.
New Castle resident Kenneth Harden is one of them. See his “In My Opinion” in this week’s Sept. 7 issue of The New Castle Record.
Harden was one of those who helped raise money for the original lighting, and even took out a loan, along with other people, to borrow money to complete the project.
In a telephone interview, School Superintendent Gordon said the decision to take down the poles for safety reasons was painful to him, too.
He said he wanted to meet with the Booster Club “to start a discussion. We kept the lights that we took down. My hope is we will be able to restore the lighting on these fields.”
Gordon went on to say, “I am very proud of the work that the former Booster Club members put into the athletics at CCHS. This group of people goes back all the way to 1971 when we were implementing football. I have the utmost respect for each and every one of them.”
“The issue of the lights was in no way meant to be a slap at these people…It was a safety issue for our students, our staff and the people who attended athletic events. My primary concern as superintendent of Craig County Schools is that we always put safety as the No. 1 priority.”
The superintendent added, “No one in this entire county felt as bad about taking these lights down as I did. I will do whatever I can in order to restore these in a timely manner”
There’s the question of money to replace the wooden poles with metal ones, though.
Gordon estimated it could cost as much as $180,000, according to what a superintendent of another school system told him about replacing lights at his school recently.
Craig County might be able to do it cheaper, though, he said, with hope, because the high school’s baseball and softball fields are closer together than that in the other county.
But where would the money come from to pay for the poles? The county school system – like most others in Virginia reflecting state budget cuts – “are in a severe budget crisis, and it is going to take people in the community to get involved in the Booster Club and other organizations.”
Gordon said, “If there is any way to get those lights back up, we want to get those lights back up as quickly as we can get them up.”
The superintendent said a row of lights had already fallen from the poles before Craig-Botetourt cut them down.
At the time, Softball Coach Mark McPherson told Brian Hoffman, sports editor of The New Castle Record, “We had asked them (the electric co-op, which supplies electricity to the school system)to come work on the lights and when they did so they noticed the poles were bad. I think they had a legitimate concern.”
He continued, “What if one of them would have come down during a game or practice it could have killed someone,” said McPherson. “And then you’d have a live wire on the ground.”
