Thank you to everyone who gave their time and supported the CPC presentation of the development of School Street.  As you know, the Acton Rec Dept with help from town leagues submitted a development plan for the School Street space, which included building a couple of ball fields – one of which would be accessible to AASL.  After months of hard work the CPC approved the phased development plan!  This note is from the Alison Trout regarding the School Street development project:

On April 3, 2006 the town approved the Community Preservation Committee’s recommendation to appropriate 70K toward the construction of a softball/little league diamond, a full-sized baseball diamond and multi-use recreation fields.  The fields are located on State-owned land next to the existing 4 acres of soccer fields on School Street near the intersection of Route 2.  The Commonwealth, through the Department of Correction, issued a license to the Town in 2003, permitting the Town to use this parcel of land for non-motorized town recreation and park purposes.  The license term is for 10 years, with an option to renew for another 10-year term.  The total cost of the field project is estimated at $103K.  The Acton Recreation Department has received written pledges for private donations equal to approximately $36K.  The Town of Acton would like to thank Acton Adult Softball League in conjunction with the Acton Recreation Department in donating $13,000K towards this project over two years.  At completion, the softball diamond at School Street will add two nights of play for AASL per week in season.  We hope this will help address AASL’s league growth.

The good news here is the additional field space for AASL.  Even though this project will be moving forward, we have not yet planned on this space and don’t know exactly how AASL will use it.  Possibilities include (a) removing Sunday game play, (b) growing the league by adding new teams, (c) increasing practice time and making up all missed rainouts, and/or (d) considering multi-divisional play.  Any or all of these are possibilities, and when the time comes we will sit down and address this.  Adding only two more nights of games/week might not be enough to allow for drastic growth, but it helps. 

Stay tuned for updates throughout the season.