LYNNFIELD — The High School’s athletic facilities are undergoing repair work before the fall sports season kicks off.
“As soon as these fall sports start, that place will be back to 100%,” Select Board Chair Joe Connell said.
The majority of the work is focused on rebuilding the school’s tennis courts and repair work on the fencing of the school’s five multi-use athletic fields.
Connell said he identified work on the fields’ fencing as a necessary project when he was coaching youth lacrosse in town around five years ago. He said the facilities’ repair and upkeep was an important issue to him when he joined the Select Board in 2021.
Connell said he worked closely with Town Administrator Robert Dolan and Department of Public Works Director John Tomasz to move the project forward in spring.
“[Dolan] saw the same thing I saw and directed DPW to get it fixed,” Connell said.
The $25,000 fencing-improvement project, which is funded by the DPW, includes the replacement of hundreds of feet of fencing, along with the installation of padding to absorb some of the blows that damaged fencing in the past, like soccer balls.
“We’ve replaced all of the fences along the amenities building, roughly about 220 feet,” Tomasz said. “We’ve also added about 120 feet of padding along that fence.”
The High School’s athletic fields were developed around a decade ago as part of the deal the town struck to allow for the development of MarketStreet Lynnfield.
Connell said that the work the town is taking on this summer is, for the most part, in line with the life cycle of many aspects of the facility. He noted that future work will include the replacement of turf fields in the coming years, with the priority being the football field, which Connell said undergoes the heaviest use.
“Fields Two and Three are in remarkable shape,” Connell said. “We just use the football field too often.”
“When this new field is built… it will be completely state of the art, with the best concussion prevention possible,” Connell added.
Tomasz said that as of right now, the field undergoes regular maintenance to keep up with state safety standards for turf fields. However, he noted that the field is approaching the end of its lifespan in the next three to five years.
“It’s now 10 or 12 years since the field was first done, it’s starting to get near the end of its useful life,” Tomasz, who estimated future turf replacement to cost around $500,000, said. “It’s one of those things where you don’t want to wait until the last minute.”
Tomasz said the tennis-court project will have a final cost of around $400,000, which was obtained from sources including grant funding, around $70,000 from private fundraising efforts, and funding from the town.
When completed, the facility will have five new courts to replace the four dilapidated courts, which Tomasz estimated to be around 20 years old.
The project will also include repainting the basketball court adjacent to the tennis court.
“It’s a full reconstruction of the tennis courts,” Tomasz said. “Hopefully in three or four months, we’ll have five new tennis courts.”
Connell noted he believes the High School’s athletic facilities are some of the best in the area. However, he stressed that he hopes the DPW and Recreation Commission stay on top of the fields’ upkeep in the future.
“These fields are too important to our town and to our kids,” Connell said.
