Club builds dugouts
Published 11:00 pm Tuesday, December 13, 2011
The baseball field at Ebenezer United Methodist Church will be a little more comfortable for players, thanks to the North Suffolk Rotary Club.
Several club members worked two days last week to install new dugouts at the field on the church’s property.
“This is a nice project for the community,” Rotarian Bill Cary said. “It should be nice for the players.”
Members of the Rotary Club and the church volunteered their time last Tuesday and Saturday to build the dugouts.
Cary said about 20 volunteers came out Saturday, and most of the work was completed.
“All we have to do now is do the top fencing in the dugouts, and they’ll be completely finished,” he said.
Cary said he thinks the project will be wrapped up right before or a little after Christmas.
“It looks very nice,” he said. “It’s a very professional-looking job.”
To fund the project, the North Suffolk club got $2,500 from Rotary International.
“This is the first time we have received money for a project like this,” Cary said.
He said North Suffolk Rotary president Tim Palmer asked him and another member to find the perfect service project.
“I talked to Pastor Carl (LeMon from Ebenezer) and asked him if he had any ideas, and he came up with this,” he said. “We thought it would be a great opportunity for the Rotary Club to work with the church.”
Cary said Rotary members Andy Brooks and Tom Conway coordinated the actual work on the project.
The new dugouts are about 10 feet deep and 20 feet long and will be covered by fencing.
“It’ll protect the players from foul balls,” Cary said.
The members also built six eight-foot-long benches for the field.
Connie Schau, Ebenezer’s youth director, said it’s going to be nice for the players to have dugouts.
“It’s a great field and a great facility, and that’s nothing but an incredible addition,” she said. “Now, it looks like a real baseball field.”
The field at Ebenezer is used by some organized teams, but it also is used by other children and adults in the community for recreation.
“This is a nice project for the community,” Cary said. “Hopefully, there will be more (people) using the field now.”