Park finds strength in sports unity

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This article was published 02/06/2023 (945 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An implausible alliance between sports has become the beating heart of one of Brandon’s busiest recreation hubs.

Hundreds of people a night head to Simplot Millennium Park in the city’ southeast corner to play baseball, slo-pitch, football and cricket on a facility developed by a generous corporate donor but maintained by a group of local volunteers.

“I think we’re a shining example of how community organizations should work together to achieve a common goal,” said Glen Simard, the former Brandon Minor Baseball Association (BMBA) vice-president who sits on the Simplot Millennium Park board.

“Everybody here is happy with the way their sport is progressing but now we need the facility to catch up because eventually, if we meet goals, we’re going to have 700 kids (in baseball), (football) is going 350 kids, (cricket) is going to have 400 kids.

“Then what?”

HISTORY

The park was completed in 2000 due to the largesse of Simplot, which donated the land and spent around $1 million to develop it. While Simplot was acquired by Koch in 2006, the name remains at the facility where the first pitch was thrown in 2001.

Blake Stephen served as BMBA president for more than a decade and is now past president. When he first joined the board, only the baseball facilities were on site and he couldn’t understand why so much land was left unused.

At the time, a serviced campground was also part of the original vision.

“I didn’t want to get into the campground business,” Stephens said. “I wanted to stay in the sports business, so that’s why I started approaching sports organizations.”

He spoke about potentially developing fields on the site with Brandon Youth Soccer Association first, back in 2013 or 2014, but at the time they didn’t see it as a suitable location and declined.

His next step was to talk to local football organizers Kevin Boyd and Blaine Moroz.

“At the very start, the vision was to have another quad over there for softball so the land had been levelled and cleared and developed somewhat,” Stephens said. “Once we went out there and looked at it, it was ‘Well, we could put a couple of fields out there pretty easily.’

“So that was how it started, and it snowballed from there with them raising money and getting the irrigation and getting the sod.”

After Boyd died suddenly on Feb. 29, 2016, the new project was named Boyd Stadium in his honour. Work began the next summer, with the first use of the fields in 2019.

Meanwhile, Simard suggested the facility had to look for more revenue streams. They talked to ultimate frisbee — that didn’t go anywhere — and let slo-pitch play on their diamonds.

The third partner fell into place in 2021.

Local cricket organizers had been searching for a permanent location, which requires 60 metres in each direction from the centre of the pitch. The solution lay in sharing with football.

“When we play cricket, sometimes the ball travels out of the field,” Brandon Cricket Club president Kushang Patel said. “There is nothing around, no residential, no commercial, even the parking lot is far. There’s less risk of getting damages, so this is the perfect field for us.”

FINANCES

Simplot Millennium Park is located near the Maple Leaf plant, nestled at the junction of Richmond Avenue East and Highway 110. The facility is essentially a vertical rectangle, with baseball on the bottom right extending up along the highway.

An irrigation pond sits on the bottom left, with the cricket and football fields north of it. There is also a large parcel of land north of the present facility that is undeveloped so far, but Stephens guessed it’s big enough for 10 full-sized soccer fields.

That’s unlikely to ever happen because the city is developing a massive recreation complex of its own on the corner of First Street and Veterans Way on the northeast edge of the city that is expected to open in 2025.

While the partnership between sports is a great start, it wouldn’t work without the finances making sense.

In an arrangement similar to what the city has with Andrews Field, the city gives the Simplot Millennium Park board a $20,000 grant and then lets them take care of things. That meant BMBA didn’t just run minor baseball, it also had a facility to look after.

“It was like ‘Here’s the money, take care of it for us,’” Simard said. “It’s hard to build a future that way.”

Early on, the BMBA had to come up with $40,000 every year just for the park, above and beyond the cost of equipment, uniforms, baseballs, umpires and affiliation fees.

Now, the park budget is about $100,000 and the baseball budget is similar.

“We’ve exploded,” Simard said. “When you get bigger, you get big-boy problems, like how to make everything work at the same time.”

The budget is met with government grants and corporate sponsorships, along with facility rentals from the three sports and admission fees for special events like provincial championships.

They also store campers in the winter for a bit more revenue.

There are five seasonal staff who look after the entire facility, doing everything from mowing to preparing baseball diamonds for games.

On top of that, there is still major work to be done at Simplot Millennium Park, which has access for baseball off Richmond Avenue, and for football and cricket off Highway 110.

PLANNING

Baseball has a nice building in the southeast corner with a canteen, washrooms, an office and storage, and the long-term vision for the facility is to set up something similar in the northwest corner for football and cricket.

“A huge priority for us is the infrastructure over there,” Stephens said. “Getting power over there, getting washrooms over there, getting that — (he points to the baseball canteen building) — over there so they have their dedicated washrooms, an umpires or officials room, a little bit of a canteen so they can sell stuff.”

The board has been approved for a Building Sustainable Communities grant, but the Simplot Millennium Park board has to put up a matching amount of $75,000, which is a hefty sum for three small sports groups.

“I don’t know a lot of community organizations that can raise that kind of money,” Simard said. “That will take care of Phase 1, which is improvements to the parking lot, walking paths, finish the irrigation, finish the power out there.

“Phase 2 is going to be more of a community thing where we build up that road and things like that. Phase 3 is turf for fields, LED lighting, things like that, the nice to haves. Right now, the first phase is the got-to haves.”

The second building is expected to cost between $150,000 to $200,000, and while it’s a priority, it’s part of phase two. They would rather build it right than in a hurry, hoping it will last as well as the other building, which is still going strong after nearly 25 years.

The current Simplot Millennium Park board, which was re-established in 2014 and is comprised of six members — Stephens, Simard, Dwayne Stone, BMBA president Scott Preston, Westman Youth Football Association president Brady Dane and treasurer Ryan Duthie — meets every couple of months during the winter.

Since it’s inevitable that people will come and go on the board — and the institutional memory will leave with the departing members — the board is doing a strategic planning process so nothing gets lost.

Stone, a longtime baseball coach, said mapping out what comes next is incredibly important.

“We’re always looking (at) 12 months a year to either plan for the next year or recap the year before,” Stone said. “And as more and more people come to the park, it’s a little bit of a double-edged sword. You’re happy to have more people at the park, but of course that takes more infrastructure, more planning.

“It’s a great problem to have, it’s just finding the infrastructure capital to sustain the people.”

They haven’t gone to the community for money yet, saying there is some confusion about the city’s new project and the existing Simplot Millennium Park facility.

“I don’t want to throw any stones, but it would be nice to see a little more partnership from the city,” Stone said. “We have city water but we don’t have city sewer. That’s 25 years and it still hasn’t happened.

“That all takes big money and capital and the only place that’s going to come from is something like the city. There are thousands of people here every week, and that’s contributing to the youth of the city.”

BUSY PLACE

The scale of what goes on at the park will surprise many people. BMBA has 430 players, football has around 200 and cricket has 18 teams. The latter also runs three tournaments.

On an average Sunday, 150 cricket players and fans are at the park.

“It sounds like 400,” Stone quipped.

Cricket began running its youth program in 2021 for anyone under the age of 19, and had 20 participants. Last year they had 30 kids and this year they have 90.

“It’s evolving,” Patel said. “There is awareness amongst the schools as well.”

The schools now have their own teams and also allow the sport to practise in the gyms during the winter.

At Simplot Millennium Park, a 10-foot by 25-foot concrete slab covered by artificial turf is where the ball is thrown to the batter, in an area a short distance from the football field. Still, cricket uses the football field too during games, so the two sports can’t be played at the same time.

Since football put in the work to finish the site before cricket arrived, they get first choice of days, and run their programming on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Cricket then schedules around that, but the cricket and football organizers work closely together. Minor football ends at the end of June while cricket goes until late September, so Patel added they have plenty of time to get their games in.

While it makes sense for cricket to be there, Patel appreciates his sport has been included.

“It’s getting people together,” Patel said. “We are a small town — I’m from Toronto and know how it works there — so it’s like a small family having families.”

PARTNERS

It also works in another way.

Dane noted football was completely shut down in 2020 and 2021 due to social distancing guidelines, and had to lean on its partners.

“We got a lot of support from the facility and from baseball because we weren’t bringing in any of our revenue,” Dane said. “There were some grant opportunities, COVID recovery grant and things like that, but generally we had no revenue and the facility really helped us.

“That was something we were very thankful for, for sure.”

The next step for football is installing its goalposts, which are on site and should permanently be in the ground sometime this summer. Dane expects that will also help people recognize how much goes on at the park, because if someone’s family isn’t active in any of the sports, it’s out of the way.

“It’s a mystery,” Dane said of what people know about Simplot Millennium Park in the community. “That’s a big part of getting these uprights up as well. You’ll be able to see them from Richmond and see them from the highway, and it will be a signal that these football fields are out there.

“There is a lot of misinformation and really no information. People don’t know what’s out here and drive by and see that (Boyd Stadium) sign and see that swamp. Putting those uprights in the ground will be a big statement for us.”

In a less symbolic step, it will also mean the sport has no limitations on what type of game it can host on the full 150-by-65-yard Canadian football field.

Cricket, meanwhile, is in the process of its own work.

“We are building practice nets,” Patel said. “The concrete is all made up right now and we’re waiting for the actual turf pitch. It’s on its way. Once we have, we’ll put it in place and build the nets something like this (gesturing to the facility’s baseball batting cages). It will be a good separate spot for practice.”

UNITY

The Simplot Millennium Park lease is up in 2030, but that’s not seen as an issue. The park board had a productive meeting with Koch last December, and Simard said the company has been terrific in helping them access grants.

Instead, the long-term health of the Simplot Millennium Park rests on three sports sharing one goal, and putting in the work to make it happen.

“My vision was always bringing people together,” Simard said. “We’ve had a few disagreements over a few things, but it’s very reasonable because this park won’t thrive if we don’t get along.

“That’s what it’s really about.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

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