Menomonee Falls baseball team hoping for turf field with switch to spring season
MENOMONEE FALLS, Wis. — Next year, 2023, will be the 102nd season in Menomonee Falls High School Baseball history. Throughout the long and storied history of Falls Baseball, the program has amassed 13 conference championships, 11 state tournament appearances and two state titles, winning back-to-back in 2015 and 2016. Additionally, Falls baseball has also sent a countless number of players to college baseball and one Major League Baseball draft pick in 2016, Ty Weber.
In 2019, Falls Baseball transitioned from summer high school baseball to spring high school baseball. This transition meant the season would begin in mid-March and end in late June. With that in mind, the spring weather is very difficult on spring baseball teams. The weather puts a tremendous strain on players, coaches, administrators, parents, bus drivers, facilities teams and many others in the baseball community. To combat the inclement weather, many communities have invested in artificial turf baseball fields, some have turfed the entire field but most just the infield and keep the outfield grass. Our project is going to turf the infield only.
We play in the Greater Metro Conference, along with eight other schools. Brookfield Central, Wauwatosa West, Wauwatosa East and Marquette currently play on turf fields. Whereas, Trenary Field in Menomonee Falls, our home field, is a natural surface. Because of the spring weather and a natural surface, our varsity team was unable to play our full 26 game schedule and only had five practices on our home field all season. In comparison, teams that have turf fields are much more likely to play their full schedule as planned and practice outside on their field as, if it鈥檚 not actively raining, the turf is playable.
One of the advantages of our baseball community being 鈥渓ate to the game鈥� in regards to turf is we have learned valuable lessons for our project from nearby communities. The need for turf from a baseball perspective is evident but other benefits include: drastic increase of outside groups renting the field in the summer and fall, significantly less stress in our facilities team, ability to host sectional playoffs, ability for physical education class use, student-athletes will be able to schedule study and work schedules as practices and games are much more likely to stay on schedule.
This August, the Menomonee Falls Athletics Booster Club begins its fundraising campaign to bring turf to Falls Baseball and Falls Fastpitch Softball. This will be the booster club’s third turf project; they have successfully completed turf football and turf soccer in recent years.
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