A $13 million makeover of Triton College’s eastern campus is set to begin this month, revamping the school’s athletic fields and providing a new outdoor venue for surrounding communities to use.
The college plans to revamp its baseball field and turn a defunct football field into a soccer field that could also be used for lacrosse.
The sports fields’ renovation is part of a larger plan to upgrade buildings and facilities at Triton, for which the school borrowed a total of $53 million in 2014.
Mary-Rita Moore, interim president of Triton, said renovating the eastern part of the campus is just part of the school’s larger vision.
“It’s really an exciting time to bring forth these renewals and combine them with our programs,” she said.
The soccer and lacrosse field will be built on the remains of the college’s football field, which hasn’t been used for sports since the football program was shut down in the 1990s. Now a bare concrete oval, the space has most recently been used in the winter to store snow scraped from the campus’ parking lots, roads and walkways.
The new field will be surrounded by a running track and other amenities for the school’s track and field team, like a shot put area and a renovated tennis court.
The college’s baseball field was built in the 1980s and hasn’t changed much since then. The money will pay for new artificial turf, new bleachers, new dugouts and a new entrance to the stadium.
“Baseball is one of our crown jewels at Triton College,” said Triton College Board Chairman Mark Stephens. “The field hasn’t kept pace.”
Stephens sees the upgraded fields as one small piece of the feel that he and other administrators envision for the school.
“We want to bring community back to community college,” he said.
Harry McGinnis, athletic director and wrestling coach at Triton College, has been at the school for 25 years and remembers when the school had a football team. He believes the project is long overdue.
“It’s been bad for decades,” he said. “All the other schools have improved their athletic facilities while ours have stayed the same.”
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McGinnis added the renovated athletic facilities will definitely help with recruiting student athletes.
“It’s very difficult to recruit student athletes if your facilities don’t look nice,” he said.
Nick Schneigert, the college’s track coach, looks forward to having a home on the campus; currently, he and his athletes have to go elsewhere.
“It will definitely help me out — instead of driving to two to three different locations to practice, we could be at one location,” he said. “It’s going to be a big plus for Triton College.”
The new field will not only be used by student athletes, but be made available to the community, which Stephens believes will be an excellent marketing tool for the college. Soccer is a very popular sport in the area and he wants to capitalize on it.
He said when the school’s soccer team isn’t using the new field, other schools and universities would be allowed to use it.
“A lot of our feeder schools have challenges and it would be open to those schools,” he said.
He hopes that when youth come to use the new field, it will put something on their mind when it comes time to think about college.
“They’ll come here and say, ‘Hey, this is fantastic,'” he said.
Making the college’s eastern campus a destination for athletes as well their family and friends is the goal, with hopes that when they see the improvements that have been mad will drive enrollment at the college. A spillover of support of surrounding economic development is something they’d like to see as well.
“We’ve got to get them here to sell it to them,” he said.
Moore, Triton’s interim president, said she’s excited to be a part of the vision for the fields and the rest of the campus. The construction and renovation of the eastern campus should be completed in November.
“It’s a great time, it’s a proud time for the college,” she said.