Work crews made emergency repairs to a ballfield at Jaycee/Ehlert Park in Brookfield last week after a village trustee ordered the field closed as a safety precaution.
The west field at the park, which is used for girls youth softball games, was closed after an April 26 game in which a Western Springs girl had her nose broken by a ball that took a bad hop.
Trustee Yvonne Prause said she moved to close the field after hearing about the incident and an unrelated issue with the condition of an equipment shed near the field.
“When a trustee is called on something like this, I think we need to take immediate steps,” said Prause, who is the village board’s liaison to the Playgrounds and Recreation Commission. She is also a former president of Brookfield American Little League, which called Jaycee/Ehlert Park home for 50 years. Last year Brookfield American merged with Brookfield National into one league.
This year, according to league officials, Brookfield Little League serves some 500 children from the ages of 4 to 12.
Games slated to be played at the west field last week from Monday to Wednesday were rescheduled. On Thursday, the field was reopened after some emergency work that was carried out April 30 by a crew from Ketchmark Cut and Care, which is owned by village Trustee Kit Ketchmark.
Ketchmark said he donated his business’ services for the repair project.
“What’s happened over the years is that they’ve been adding infield mix to the infield [dirt], and it’s been built up so that six to eight inches of dirt is higher than the grass,” Ketchmark said. “So if you’re looking from shortstop to home, if you hit a flat grounder, [the ball will] flip up [when it reaches the lip of dirt].”
That’s reportedly what happened on April 26, when a player from visiting Western Springs took a ball off her nose. When Lisa Parcell, VP of softball operations for Brookfield National Little League, was called to the field, she decided to call an ambulance, since the child’s parent was not present.
The game resumed and was completed after the injured player was taken from the field, Parcell said, and the visiting team never complained about the condition of the field. She said she was surprised Prause decided the field’s condition was bad enough to close it down.
“Never did I see this one coming,” Parcell said.
Jim Bednar, president of Brookfield National Little League, said that the condition of the west field has been well known for years and that never, even when Prause was president of Brookfield American, did anyone suggest that it was dangerous or should be closed.
“This field needed to be worked on for quite a few years now,” Bednar said.
The condition of the field was enough of an issue for the Little League that it signed a $13,750 contract with Sportsfields, Inc. to have that company skin and re-sod the west field this spring.
Bednar told village trustees that he notified the village’s Playgrounds and Recreation Commission of the plan last winter, but neither they nor Village Manager Riccardo Ginex appeared to have heard about the plan prior to being told of the contract at the village board meeting on April 26.
Because of the soggy spring, the field work was unable to be completed. Bednar said he hopes the field repair would happen later this summer.
The village of Brookfield has historically given its Little League organizations wide latitude concerning improvements to village fields. In reality, the village has virtually ceded field maintenance to the leagues, and the village generally has played a very passive role in monitoring those projects.
At Overholt Field at Kiwanis Park, for example, the baseball field for decades has been manicured daily during the baseball season by Roy Overholt himself.
While village officials recognize that that kind of volunteerism has provided more care than the village itself could provide, Ginex said that there ought to be a more formal relationship between the village and the leagues to improve communication about problems and plan for solutions.
“There needs to be a partnership,” Ginex said.
By formalizing the lines of communication, Ginex said that Public Works Director William Heider could begin including such projects in the village budget, and that the village may in some cases be able to get better pricing for jobs such as field replacement.
“We don’t want you to back off,” Ginex said of the league. “We want to work with you.”
In addition to the condition of the west field, Bednar and Parcell also alerted the village to the problem at the equipment shed, commonly referred to as “the Hilton,” at Ehlert Park.
A leaky roof, compounded over the years by kids climbing on top of it, caused the league to lose some $1,000 in equipment to water damage. The interior walls of the building also developed a mold problem.
Bednar said that the league had earmarked its cash savings for replacing the field and didn’t have the money to fix the problem at the Hilton. Since that time, a volunteer has stepped up to address the roofing problem. Jimmy’s Quality Roofing in Brookfield will donate the materials and labor to replace the roof.