Field still a dream
KARNS CITY — The site is in his sights.
Making use of it may be much farther away.
Josh “Sluggo” Smith has been Karns City’s head baseball coach for six years now. A KC graduate himself, he recalls his playing days with the Gremlins at Fairview Park.
“I remember taking the field as a player there,” Smith said. “I always knew where my grandfather’s truck would be parked — at the same spot along the fence — and where he’d be standing to watch the game.
“There was a hometown feel to that. I want the kids coming through our baseball program to experience that.”
Karns City has been playing its home games at Michelle Krill Memorial Field at Historic Pullman Park in recent years.
Smith said there’s an old Pony League field “about a half-mile down the road from our high school” that could be converted into Karns City’s new home field. The property is not owned by the school district.
The field has not been in use recently and would require work to get it back into shape.
“The borough or township would have to own the facility, but that’s a very doable project,” Smith said. “We have so many excavating businesses out this way and I know volunteers would be willing to come on board to make this happen.
“Playing high school baseball in Western Pennsylvania in early spring ... we’d want the field to be (artificially) turfed. That’s almost a must to get the proper use out of it.”
Smith and the KC baseball players recently made their request for a new home field public at a school board meeting. The movement for a new field is nothing new to KC athletic director Josh Williams.
“We’ve talked about this before,” Williams said. “Sluggo is pretty passionate about this and we are exploring the possibility. There are some issues that need to be addressed.
“We all recognize the benefit to having our own field. Sluggo’s an intelligent guy who knows a lot goes into something like this. It’s not like we can wave a magic wand and make a field appear.”
Smith pointed out that the Gremlins have to drive 35 minutes to get to Pullman Park to play. Games are often unable to start at the scheduled times because of multiple games being scheduled there on given days.
“We don’t play any home games, really,” Smith said. “It got so backed up one night that our scheduled 7:30 p.m. game didn’t start until 9:38. That was on a school night. We always promote the fact that school comes first and that was a bad look.”
Williams admitted there would be “obvious benefits” to having a home baseball field near school grounds. There is no feasible piece of property on school grounds to build a field.
Smith mentioned that the football stadium, track and gym take care of most of the school’s other sports.
“The district wants nice facilities for all of our sports,” the coach said. “Our football players coming out of the school locker rooms onto the field, a basketball player hitting a winning shot in our own gym ... You can’t describe what that feels like. Our baseball players deserve that, too.
“A nice late afternoon or early evening, people in the community wander over to the field to watch a ballgame ... Our town is missing that. We just have to come together and make this happen.”
Williams agreed — within reason.
“I think we all want this. It’s just not going to happen overnight,” he said.
