A school board discussion of Key West High School’s new $17 million football stadium turned testy on Dec. 13, pitting football against baseball as baseball players learned recently that they will be unable to access their facilities — fields, batting cages and weight rooms — throughout the off-season.
The Rex Weech baseball complex on Glynn Archer Drive backs into Tommy Roberts Memorial football stadium on Kennedy Drive and will necessarily be affected by construction.
Initially, construction schedules called for a complete cancellation of the 2023 baseball season due to the stadium construction. An uproar prompted the school board instead to delay the start of construction until after the 2023 baseball season.
The football team has a new field in what’s known as The Backyard behind Key West High School, where the school has played home games for the past two seasons. The baseball team has no such alternative location and no municipal ballfields are large enough to accommodate a high school outfield.
School board members on Dec. 13 heard from several baseball players, parents and supporters about the importance of their off-season training programs to athletes’ college scholarship potential.
“It’s not my intention to make this a football vs. baseball issue, but now it has become one,” baseball supporter Jill Burnham told the school board. “Your facilities director (Pat Lefere) told us it was not his responsibility to provide access to the baseball facilities in the off-season. He said the baseball boosters have enough money to figure something out. You have an obligation to provide fair and equitable resources to all students and all sports. Are you upholding the same Conch Pride qualities that you demand from your students?”
Junior baseball player Felix Ong told the board he has made a verbal commitment to play college baseball for University of Florida after he graduates, and then hopes to be drafted into the major leagues. He said none of his accomplishments would have been possible without the off-season training programs, which remain crucial to his college and professional plans in his last years of high school.
“Please figure something out for us,” he said.
Board member Mindy Conn began questioning Lefere, the district’s director of facilities and operations, about why Ajax, the stadium contractor, can’t install construction fences around the active construction site and continue to allow access to other areas.
“We build entire schools all the time and still give students access to other areas of the campus,” Conn told Lefere during a heated exchange that prompted chairman Andy Griffiths to reprimand Conn and direct her comments to the chair, rather than Lefere.
“You can’t tell me where to address my comments,” Conn retorted.
“I don’t like you two going back and forth and getting elevated,” Griffiths said.
“I’ll take my elevation down, but I still want answers,” Conn said.
Lefere repeatedly told the board the construction plans required the use and closure of the baseball facilities in the off-season, but Conn and other board members said they’d like to hear that from Ajax, the construction company, directly.
Upper Keys board member Sue Woltanski said she hadn’t realized how long the baseball facilities would be off-limits during the football stadium construction.
The board ultimately approved the agenda items to allow the stadium construction to proceed, but did not close the door on further discussions with Ajax to help the baseball team and potential changes to the timing and/or the staging area during construction.
