North Penn ballplayers plead for field upgrades

 As the North Penn School District heads into the start of renovations to North Penn High School, one team is asking district officials to keep them in mind.

Players and parents from the high school’s ‘North Penn Knights’ baseball team have made the case in recent weeks for upgrades to their ballfields, citing this fall’s drought and warning of possible problems if improvements aren’t made.

“As I made my way through the middle schools, the fields I was playing on were not in good condition. The community fields were in much better condition, but I thought to myself, I can’t wait to get to the high school and play on a real, well-maintained field. Sadly, the dream is dying,” said senior Knight Kevin Brace.

“I recently saw the infield grass, and it’s just shy of a mud pit. The damage is so bad that I don’t know if we’re going to be able to play on it in the spring,” he said.

Renovations to North Penn High School have been discussed at length by the school board and district administrators over the past two years, with the latest design building a large addition between the current school’s A-pod and H-pod, smaller additions in the F-pod and J-pod, and updated utilities, fixtures and finishes throughout the school. On Dec. 2 the school board voted to seek bids on the first phase of the high school renovations, after several comments during the board’s facilities and operations committee meeting in late November, followed by the only board meeting in December, where parents and players from the baseball team shared their requests for the board to consider.

“We’ve put a lot of time and effort over the years, through our booster club, and raising money, and putting upgrades into these facilities, and some of those things are just not being kept up with from the school,” said parent Bob Kelley.

“We’re not looking to build a Citizens Bank Park or Yankee Stadium outside of the high school, I know that’s not quite in the budget — but there’s a lot of pool money in the budget — but if we could just put a priority on taking care of what we’ve done,” he said.

“We desperately need irrigation. There’s an underlying concern here that there’s going to be some safety issues coming into the spring, because we have a ton of dry patches on the field,” Kelley said.

“We have monsters on our team, they hit the ball really hard, and if that ball’s gonna skip off of that (ground), we could have a lot of issues,” he said. “I just really wish that we could make that a priority for a community that’s really big here. We have hundreds of kids, there’s a great community involvement, and anything you can do would be really appreciated.”

    North Penn Knights baseball players pick weeds from the warning track at their ballfield adjacent to North Penn High School in Aug. 2024. (Credit: Facebook/North Penn Knights Baseball)
  

Sean Underwood, current president of North Penn Baseball’s ‘Extra Inning’ club and father of a current player, outlined work that the ballplayers and their boosters have done to date.

“Between 2012 and 2024, the Extra Inning club funded over $100,000 (in upgrades), and made field improvements on the backs of our hardworking players, parents and sponsors. We installed a fence, installed new sod in the infield, built dugouts, rebuilt the hill behind home plate, as well as many other improvements to make a safe playing field,” he said.

“Sadly, we’re seeing these investments deteriorate, causing potentially unsafe environment for our players,” he said.

Underwood then cited stats: if a ground ball is hit at an average exit velocity of 90 miles per hour, and first and third base are 90 feet from home plate, players there have less than half a second to react. “Now, imagine the field has irregularities due to lack of attention. What can this create? A bad hop, maybe resulting in an error for our team, or worse: a bad hop that injures a player,” he said.

Parent Matt Chartrand echoed the comments, saying his son is on the baseball team now, and he’s “definitely disappointed that baseball and softball facilities continue to be neglected, in terms of the budget and development plans” for the high school renovations.

“My concern is that the multipurpose fields at the high school, the additional ones, will really serve very little purpose, while our top-notch baseball and softball programs are forced to play on fields that’ve been neglected, and at this point, are just unsafe. At a minimum, these fields need irrigation in place, just to maintain and protect the current facilities,” he said.

In December, ballplayers added their own thoughts: Brace listed other sports-related projects included in the latest high school plans, including two new multipurpose fields, upgrades to the school’s pool, and new tennis courts, before asking the board to keep the ballplayers in mind.

“My friends at different schools, such as Plymouth Whitemarsh, Spring Ford, Quakertown, all have these amazing facilities. But yet we continue to fall short,” he said. “I remember dreaming about playing on the varsity field, and I know that kids today do the same.”

    Ballplayers and coaches pose after taking part in the ‘Junior Knights’ baseball camp hosted by North Penn Knights Baseball in June 2024 (Credit: Facebook/North Penn Knights Baseball)
  

Tracy DiLorenzo, parent of another player, said she grew up in Philadelphia and remembers hearing “North Penn was like a powerhouse — it was like going to the Taj Mahal of schools. North Penn has an amazing reputation outside of this community,” she said, and noted the school’s softball programs have won more championships than any similar squad in the state. She then said she works as a nurse at a local hospital, and often sees injuries on student athletes, and worries about her ballplayers suffering similar ones.

“It’s a safety issue, on our fields. The ground is so hard. Kids are running, they’re sliding into bases, they’re diving for fly balls, they’re diving for popups. The way the condition of the fields is now, because of the lack of irrigation, it’s like letting basketball players go out and dive on a solid basketball court,” she said.

Superintendent Todd Bauer answered the baseball parents by noting that “the hope was” to tackle those ballfields in a larger project if ninth grade had moved to the high school campus, but voters vetoed those plans in a referendum in January 2024. “Since that vote, plans for the campus surrounding the school have been downsized: “the entirety of the work is essentially inside of the building” now, Bauer said, but the ballfields could be addressed separately or after.

“I remember when I first got here in 2015, talking with (baseball coaches), it was ‘high school renovation, high school renovation, high school renovation, let’s see about these fields.’ Now that we know it won’t be a part of the renovation, I do think it would be responsible to develop a plan,” he said.

Early talks have been held about doing so, Bauer added, and that plan could include irrigation for the fields, lights, added or upgraded seating, then turf if needed, and planning utility connections for those upgrades could be part of the high school work that starts in 2025.

“The ability to add lights, the ability to add irrigation: we could get pricing on what it would cost for each of these things, and then in year one we’ll do this, in year three we’ll do this, in year five this. I would love to see a comprehensive plan for those fields,” Bauer said.

North Penn’s school board next meets at 7 p.m. on Jan. 7 and the facilities and operations committee next meets at 7 p.m. on Jan. 27; for more information visit www.NPenn.org.

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