LAPEL — It was six years in the making, but after grants, donations and a lot of volunteer work, the Lapel Youth Softball League has a place to play.
Brookside Park is the newest of four town parks — joining Woodward, Memorial and Central — and home to the town’s softball league.
It will also be the host site of this weekend’s Babe Ruth Softball State Tournament.
Six years ago the league had two diamonds located across from the Lapel High School, but the town sold the land to the Lapel Stony Creek Fire Territory. After the fire territory built its new station, there was just one field left to play on.
So, then-softball league president Bill Hutton came up with a plan. He developed the Lapel Park Board to apply for a grant from the Department of Natural Resources to create Brookside Park.
The new park has four new softball fields, along with a playground, walking trail and shelter.
“The main intent was to have a new facility where the girls could play,” Hutton said. “I understood when the town sold the land for the fire station, but it still hurt that we didn’t have a place for the girls to play.”
There were plenty of hurdles along the way, including generating money to build the new facility.
With the development of the board, the town could apply for a grant. It received $200,000 from the DNR along with another $50,000 from the town’s Olevia Cascadden Fund, a trust left by the late Lapel resident after her death in 2015.
That money helped but was still not enough to complete the project. With volunteer work and donations, Hutton and the softball league could finally see the finish line.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Lapel Youth Softball League President Katie Hutchison said. “Without Bill, we would have nowhere to play.”
The softball league began playing at the park in May, using two available fields for most of the regular season. The third field became available during the season.
The fourth diamond is being completed this week, just in time for teams from eight different Babe Ruth leagues to take part in the state tournaments.
Girls from ages 6 to 18 will be competing in four different age-group brackets.
There are six age groups overall, but some groups have been combined. The age groups are 8-and-under, 10-and-under, 12-and-under, 14-and-under, 16-and-under and 18-and-under. The 14 to 18 groups have been combined into one tournament.
Teams are coming from Hammond, South Bend, Lakeshore (from Whiting), Westfield, Tipton, Madison-Grant and Angola.
There are 18 teams that will play up to 55 games with the winners having the option to play in the upcoming regional tournament in Fern Creek, Ky.
Teams will have three pool-play games in their bracket, which will determine seeding for the double-elimination tournament.
Lapel has teams competing in the 8-and-under and 10-and-under tournaments.
The names of the four fields are a ‘thank you’ to those that donated their time and efforts in getting the park completed.
Field 1 is Bodenhorn Field, named after the family that donated the land to the park board.
Field 2 is Blazer Farm Field. Blazer Farm, out of Kokomo, did the grading of the fields for free. Hutton said the park board only had to pay for maintenance and work hours.
“The grading alone probably costs $200,000. They didn’t charge anything for moving the dirt,” Hutton said
Field 3 is E&B Field (for E&B Paving), and Field 4 is IMI Field (for Irving Materials Inc., concrete supplier).
“There is no way we had enough money to do all of this. It took the volunteers to get it done,” Hutton said, praising the work of many including the softball league.
The tournament begins today with games running from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily through Saturday.
On Sunday, action begins at 11 a.m. with games expected to wrap up mid-afternoon.
“To have people step up and put this much work in to get the park ready is amazing,” Hutchison said.