Groundbreaking takes place at new baseball field

A ground breaking ceremony took place this week at the new home of the Royal Giants and the St. Joseph-Ogden Baseball team.

An anonymous donor is building a baseball field for the Royal Giants of the
Eastern Illinois Baseball League and has asked if the SJO baseball team would like to play home games at the facility, SJO school board member Les Hoveln said.

Hoveln said if everything goes well with weather and construction the new field could be open by early July.

Hoveln has acted as an intermediary between the school district and the donor. After spending years looking for land in the Royal area, the donor finally found land across from Salt Fork Paintball and the Pioneer Seed plant on Route 150 in St. Joseph for sale and is moving forward with the project.

The field will not have lights initially, but lights could be added at a later date. It will have restroom and concession areas along with storage facilities.

Hoveln said the donor was open to the high school team using the field as their home field in exchange for the district helping with the continued maintenance of the field. Hoveln estimated that cost would be below $2,000 a month.

The grass infield and outfield will be fully irrigated and the facility will have grass parking.

Some discussions have included moving Randy Wolken Field, SJO’s home softball venue, to where the current baseball field is located. The donor has also told the school that if they wanted to relocate the softball field to the new location, at their own cost, he would be open to that, Hoveln said.
 Hoveln said they plan on laying the water and electrical that is necessary to house two fields at the location in the event the school would want to do that.  The softball field would be located to the west of the baseball field.  When the project was being permitted, they included a softball field in case the district would want to pursue that option.

The donor will maintain the ownership of the property, but there would be an agreement in place that the Spartans and the Giants have a place to play as long as they want to and nothing can change that deal.