While Oxford and Lafayette County residents bundled up thinking about warmer weather this week, FNC Park director Brad Freeman and his staff have been going over the final details on what should be busy spring season.
Cold and wet weather has become much less of a problem for a facility like FNC Park, which features eight turf baseball fields. As a result of the improvements, the schedule is full of events, from youth baseball and softball tournaments to Oxford Park Commission soccer. As soon as the weekend of Feb. 15-17 arrives, Freeman said there is at least one event each weekend through the month of June.
“What the trend is now that we’ve seen is teams are starting earlier. Generally speaking in years past, just three years ago, most everybody was starting the week after spring break,” Freeman said about travel teams. “That’s when they would really get going with playing. That’s not how it is anymore, so you adapt to that.”
A USSSA baseball tournament will begin the spring calendar for FNC Park. Freeman said that 118 teams were signed up on Jan. 30.
“That’s a monster start to the year. We’re following that up with a fastpitch event that has 40 teams in it so far,” Freeman said. “A really big fastpitch event has about 60 teams, so we’re starting off the year really hot in February.”
OPC soccer begins on Feb. 19, and there are 840 youth signed up to play this spring, which is the largest amount on record. On Feb. 23, the facility will host a soccer tournament as well as a fastpitch softball tournament. March is even more booked up than February.
“We are constantly preparing for events, not just on the weekends,” Freeman said. “We have OPC soccer, OPC baseball and softball. Those are as big as anything we have on the weekend. There is a lot of prep work all the time, but it’s good.”
Coaches who are looking to sign up for an upcoming tournament at FNC Park can do so even easier than before through fncpark.com.
Ever since the middle of December, Freeman said the staff uses a two-month window to work on projects that they aren’t able to get to during the year.
More fencing has been installed by the parking lot to prevent wear on the grass. French drains were also installed at one of the baseball fields to help improve the drainage, while additional work was completed inside the hitting facility.
“It’s been a lot of little projects that add up to big things,” Freeman said. “Another project we had was an update to our lightning detection system. We got a new sensor, which is great.”
The ThorMobile app associated with FNC Park shows a radar and lightning map that will help when inclement weather approaches.
“We have a way now to show people, real time, the actual weather at FNC Park. This website will tell you all clear and play on or if it’s a red alert,” Freeman said. “We think it’s a great feature because you can see what the lightning is doing at the park in real time now. It’s a cool feature that we like.”
Birthday parties located inside the indoor activity center have become very popular over the last few months. There have been some weekends where the facility hosted two or three birthday parties.
“That’s been a big bonus, something we didn’t expect to do as well as it has,” Freeman said. “It’s been a really good addition to what we can offer.”
Press release courtesy of John Davis, FNC Park Community Relations Director
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