By Joe Morey
News Editor
and VP of the LCO Youth Baseball Assocation
The LCO Youth Baseball Association has been hard at work planning and developing an expanded baseball facility at the ball fields near the Sevenwinds Casino. On Thursday, May 27, volunteer parents and a couple of players got together and assembled brand new bleachers for the fields. Those included Brian Mohr, Field Maintenance manager for the association, Paul Schmitt, Owner of True Integrity Construction who is building the field’s new dugouts, and their children Gannon Mohr, Jason Wittwer and Devin Schmitt, along with parents Bruce Miller and Gary Belille. The Association sends out a huge thanks to these guys for all they do for youth baseball at LCO!
In the photos below you can see them hard at work, as well as our Little League fields well-maintained by Brian and the newly-renovated dugouts done by True Integrity.
Also, in the upcoming week, three new digital scoreboards will be installed by TJ Electric and DakTronics at the back of each of the three fields. These are professionally installed and will make great new additions to the facility. New electrical work had to be done at the fields to make this happen, but the electric work was done in anticipation of lights installed at all three fields and a concession stand in the near future with a full kitchen.
The LCO Youth Baseball Association also purchased a collegiate-level batting cage that will be installed in concrete footings next week. This work will also be coordinated by Brian Mohr. The Association would really like to acknowledge Brian for the incredible work he has been doing maintaining the fields!
At the fields back behind the two existing fields there has been a lot of work going on with construction of a new Babe Ruth field, which we anticipate will be hosting ball games with LCO’s new Babe Ruth team playing in the Heart of the North Conference. Thompson’s Sand & Gravel has been doing a great job putting this field together for our community and we are all excited to get playing there. The field is projected to be ready for action in July in time for two tournament weekends the Association has planned. In the meantime, the LCO Babe Ruth Eagles will be hosting their home games at the Seeley Ball Field and the season kicks off on June 2 with their first game on the road in Exeland. The Babe Ruth team had three pre-season games which they finished out 2-1, losing their first to Hayward Gold by a score of 5 to 1, then going on to defeat Cumberland 8 to 1 and Shell Lake 16 to 6.
On Tuesday night, we are hosting Baseball Night at LCO with three ball games, the first at 4:30 between the two LCO A teams facing off with each other , then both A teams host home games, A1 hosting Birchwood and A2 hosting Ojibwa. This should be a great night of baseball with a full concession stand operating featuring Steph’s Fybread, homemade chili, Indian Tacos and so much more. We are also holding our two $1,000 drawings at 8 pm. If you haven’t got your tickets yet, they will be on sale during the games.
