In the Churchville-Chili Central School District, residents said yes to a $22.7 million plan that includes major renovation to several athletic facilities. Pool renovation, improve the drainage system at the track facility and replace the grass field with synthetic turf are parts of the total plan that will have a major impact on the Saints athletic teams in the near and long term.
“Sometime in late June to early July, contractors are scheduled to break ground at Churchville-Chili’s current athletic stadium,” Athletic Director Michael Murray said. “The end result will be an artificial turf field, brand new track, and other upgrades to the area. “The hope is to open the new stadium for use in the fall 2018 athletic season. Varsity soccer, football, lacrosse, and track & field will continue to host their home contests there as we have in the past.”
The 2017-18 year will involve many temporary facilities and arrangements. “In preparation for this project, we made many upgrades to Field #1 which is located right in front of our high school,” Murray said. “We performed these upgrades in the summer of 2016 and may make a few more this summer. This field has been used for JV football, soccer and lacrosse in the past but will be used for varsity games next year.”
“We rebuilt our dugouts and built a small press box within these dugouts, added a sound system, moved the scoreboard off the dugouts to a more visible location, rebuilt the scoreboard, added a nice C-C Saints name plate to the scoreboard, added a flag, and also added some pole banners,” Murray added. “We also added some nice banners to the back of our dugout and press box. Thus, the field is varsity ready now.”
“We will play all of our home soccer and lacrosse games on this field. We will play one home football game on this field as part of our homecoming week (September 30 vs. Rush-Henrietta),” continued Murray. “Our other two home football games (September 15 vs. Webster-Thomas and October 6 vs. Victor) will be played at SUNY Brockport. We hope to rent some bleacher seats to accommodate the larger varsity crowds.”
“The JV teams that have been playing on field #1 will get moved around to other fields on campus and this will result in Modified teams being moved around a bit too,” Murray explained. Next spring, track & field practices will be held at Roberts Wesleyan College and all meets will be held as away meets at other schools in the county.
“The addition of artificial turf will open up a whole new area for teams to practice year round,” Murray said. “This new field will be a tremendous boost to our students and will greatly help get teams outside faster and more often. Our spring teams will gain an advantage of getting outside on a full field instead of practicing in gymnasiums with springs such as this where the snow is still on the ground, it will be a huge help,” Murray said.
