Construction has been completed on the new baseball and softball fields in Plainfield after roughly two years of work. Starting in 2025, the Nashua-Plainfield school district will have a new home for their baseball and softball teams.
The new complex includes new fields for the school’s high school baseball and softball teams, as well as a pair of youth fields for both softball and baseball. The baseball diamond will be dedicated as Cary Griffith Field, and the softball field as Leonard Yilek Field.
Nashua-Plainfield Superintendent Jay Marley talked about the fields and the amenities they include.
“It’s a state of the art facility. We have irrigation systems on all the diamonds, and we also have a state of the art concession stand that we will not only look to provide food to people attending the events but also to the town of Plainfield. Since there isn’t a lot of restaurants in town, it’ll be an opportunity for the people of Plainfield to buy some home cooked meals,” Marley described.
The fields will also have something that previous homes for Husky baseball and softball have not had: lights.
At their previous home fields, which were at two different locations, neither baseball nor softball possessed field lights, thus preventing them from playing games past sunset. The Huskies were one of the few teams in the Top of Iowa Conference that did not have lights on their field. Now, that problem is no more.
The fields were built on the location of the old Plainfield school building, which were not in use after the consolidation with the Nashua school district. As Harley describes, the replacement of the building with the fields allows for the school district to move more school district activities back into the area and permit Plainfield to be the focal point of the Huskies’ summer sports.
“We didn’t want to leave that property alone. We wanted to continue to utilize [the space] and keep our partnerships with our neighboring communities. [Plainfield] is a part of our district, and it’s important that we continue to keep opportunities for our student-athletes in that community,” Harley said.
The fields were originally planned to be funded entirely from school funds. However, thanks to an ongoing capital campaign by the school, a number of sponsors were able to contribute to the project. These donors have raised a total of 356,173 dollars to go towards the three million dollar project.
The donors who contributed $10,000 or more include: Eric and Kate Sudol, the Whitinger family, Dallas and Derek Pagel, First State Bank in Nashua, Lincoln Savings Bank in Nashua, First Bank in Plainfield, and a donation in memoriam of Gary “Dizzy” Bellinger. The school is still taking donations towards the project as they look to continue to add amenities and other necessary features.
The grand opening and dedications of the facility and fields will be on May 29. The Huskies will face North Linn in baseball and Hampton-Dumont-CAL in softball.