Little League baseball coach Daniel Anderson has found it difficult to find practice space at Bryan Park during inclement weather. With only one 10-year-old batting cage available, league officials knew it was time to expand, especially as Little League participation remains strong.
Thanks to an agreement between the Oglethorpe County Board of Commissioners and Little League, in which the two parties agreed to split costs, Bryan Park finished construction of a new batting cage at the end of January.
“I honestly think it's a blessing,” Anderson said. “We need way more facilities like that for the kids in this county.”
The project cost $20,000 and features an 1,800-square-foot, two-sided batting cage, equipped with LED lighting and turf floors.
Anderson, 45, has been coaching Little League since 2009. He said he believes the new batting cage will prevent practice cancellations due to rain, which has been a problem.
“We’d end up having to miss practice, and we only had the little batting cages up there at the gym, so they were always taken,” Anderson said. “You couldn’t ever get to use them because of so many kids in Little League, and so you really had to just cancel practice all together.”
Further expansion was a priority for recreation department director Michael White, who also heads the county’s Little League.
“Instead of having two teams hitting in a time slot, you’re going to have four teams hitting a time slot, which is gonna drastically change things,” White said.
Construction of the batting cage began in October, with Public Works director Adam Nation and his road maintenance team installing the flooring. The structure was built by R&B Metal Structures Inc. in Jackson, Georgia.
White also helped with construction, setting up the nets and wiring the lighting. Despite working alone at times, he said he didn’t mind the labor.
“I’m not an office guy. I’m kind of a hands-on — cutting grass, lining fields and fixing some busted pipe — kind of guy,” White said. “Any kind of project like that, I’m gonna prefer to do it myself.”
While field space remains an issue, the new batting cages add more options for the county.
“When you think about the youth sports in the county, you’re inevitably growing the next citizen that’s going to either be a chairperson, a commissioner or a school teacher,” Anderson said. “The more they can get out into the county and actually do something, the more likely they’ll usually stay.”