Stone Memorial High School beginning the process to build a new baseball facility.
Assistant Principal and Athletic Director Nathan Brown said the baseball team outgrew the old facility. That facility will be repurposed for the softball team.
“We’re actually very excited to be able to repurpose that and allow it to be used as a hitting facility and training facility for girl’s softball now,” Brown said. “We are one of the first schools in the Upper Cumberland that’s going to be able to do that for our girl’s softball team, allowing them to have an indoor facility as well.”
Boosters have helped secure most of the funds for the new baseball facility. The goal for the opening of the new baseball facility is January 2024, but Brown said he hopes to have the baseball team in the facility by Christmas.
Brown said the decision to build facility was part of a wider scope of work among athletic officials and boosters to improve facilities across the Panthers’ campus.
“It’s just a vision of improving our facilities across the campus from all of our boosters and that’s just one piece of that,” Brown said. “Last year the football boosters put in a new jumbotron for our football field. They put in play clocks as well. It’s a school-wide vision from multiple boosters from multiple sports to get us up to par with schools we want to be more competitive with in the Nashville-Knoxville-Chattanooga region.”
The boosters will raise money as they go. Brown said the boosters are what made this new facility happen.
“I’m incredibly grateful and thankful for the baseball boosters,” Brown said. “We have amazing boosters for our baseball program. They have had a great vision for what they want our program to look like and they are working toward accomplishing that. It has been great watching them work with the community.”
Brown said he hopes that the new project and others like it will inspire the community to come out and support Stone Memorial sports teams.
“I just want people on our campus,” Brown said. “We have a beautiful campus at Stone Memorial. It’s large, and any time we can get people on our campus and out to support our kids, that’s what its all about.
The new baseball facility will be directly across from the baseball field. The softball facility is across from the softball field.