Conch Baseball is “safe at home.”
Officials made the call on Tuesday to save the 2023 baseball season by postponing construction of Key West High School’s new football stadium.
The Rex Weech baseball complex on Glynn Archer Drive backs into the football stadium on Kennedy Drive and will necessarily be affected by construction of the new stadium.
Dozens of baseball players — past, present and future — plus parents, coaches and fans, packed the School Board meeting Tuesday to protest a revised stadium construction timeline that would have made baseball’s Rex Weech Field unavailable for the 2023 season. But instead of protesting, the baseball crowd applauded loudly when School Board members decided to postpone the stadium construction until after the 2023 baseball season.
“Unless we have a field available and transportation to take our players to that field, we can’t cancel a high school baseball season,” board member Mindy Conn said Tuesday to the appreciative audience. “I don’t see how there’s any other option. Too many kids go to college through the high school baseball program.”
The audience applauded again when board member Andy Griffiths said, “If there are no good options, I don’t see that we have any other choice but to delay construction until April 2023.”
Their enthusiasm continued when board chair John Dick reminded his colleagues and the audience that he had been the first to suggest the delay a month or so ago to save the baseball season.
No one argues that the Key West High School football team’s Tommy Roberts Memorial Stadium is in dire need of an overhaul, although some residents do lament the new stadium’s $15 million price tag.
Construction of the new stadium was slated to begin in April, after the 2022 baseball season. But the project hit significant delays when environmental assessments revealed soil contamination that must first be mitigated, or fixed. Crews must cap the contaminated soil with a special protective layer, and raise the football field by at least a foot, school district operations director Pat Lefere said. A revised schedule would have had construction last from November 2022 until September 2023, making Rex Weech Field unusable for the 2023 baseball season.
With the deteriorating football bleachers deemed unsafe, the Conchs’ football team has been playing its home games at the school’s “Backyard,” a newly built football field and track behind the high school on Flagler Avenue. But there is no baseball field at the Backyard and the baseball team has no alternative location. The nearby city-owned ballfields at the Sterling complex aren’t regulation size for high school baseball.
“To be clear, we never intended for any season to be interrupted,” Superintendent Theresa Axford emphasized at Tuesday’s board meeting, which was moved to Key West’s City Hall due to the anticipated crowd size. “Our plan was for construction to occur from April to December of this year, so it would have started after this current baseball season. But we were thrown a curveball by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection when they found contaminants in the soil. So we’re looking for a solution.”
Lefere, the school district’s director of operations, proposed an unpopular solution in which construction would stretch from November 2022 until July 2023.
“Tommy Roberts Memorial Stadium will not be available for the 2023 baseball season. Please plan accordingly…,” states a Dec. 16, 2021 memo from school district facilities planner Doug Pryor to KWHS principals, coaches and school district officials that explained the contamination and revised timeline.
The memo dismayed baseball players, their parents and fierce supporters, including longtime baseball devotee Jack Niles, who owns Niles Sales & Service car dealership in Key West. Niles and several others rallied the troops and urged the School Board to postpone construction until after the 2023 baseball season.
Board Chair John Dick first floated the postponement idea at last month’s meeting, where board members all expressed concern and frustration with the delays, mitigation requirements and regulatory red tape.
“This was always planned with baseball season in mind, but the DEP put us behind,” Lefere said on Tuesday, warning the school board that a postponement could add $500,000 to $1 million to the stadium’s $15 million price tag due to the rising costs of materials and labor, and current supply chain shortages.
Chairman John Dick told Lefere, “You had originally planned this around baseball season. Look, these people want to play baseball. Get some applause. Agree with us. Save the baseball season.”
Lefere responded, “We’ll follow the direction of the board.”
Dick also suggested that some of the work, in areas, farthest from the baseball complex, could occur during the 2023 baseball season.
“Can’t they start over there on the bleacher side? Baseball doesn’t have anything to do with the football bleachers,” Dick said. “People would understand if we had started the work, and then found Bum Farto (Key West’s notoriously missing former fire chief, who disappeared while awaiting sentencing on drug trafficking charges) buried under the field or something. But these kids want to play baseball.”
As the crowd filed out of City Hall, Dick promised a “crown jewel” of a new football stadium — after the baseball team’s 2023 season at Rex Weech Field — and hopefully another state championship, Dick added.
“I can’t imagine these older kids losing the opportunity to play their final baseball season at their home field,” Sam Holland, Jr. told the Keys Weekly while leaving City Hall on Tuesday.
His son, Sam Holland, is a freshman varsity outfielder for the Conchs. His father, Sam Holland, Sr., was a star first baseman who played with Key West’s Major League Baseball legend Boog Powell when the Conchs earned three state championships. “My father’s fondest memories are of playing Conch baseball with all his high school buddies. I just can’t imagine taking that away from any Key West kids.”
Holland, Jr. has coached Key West youth baseball for more than a decade, “from tee ball to Pony League.” He added a “tremendous thank-you to Jack Niles for his unwavering support of and involvement in Key West’s baseball programs.”
