Overton Board Hears Upgrade Needs For Softball Facilities

The Overton County School Board will consider improvements to the Livingston Academy Softball facilities after multiple issues noted by the school’s coach.

Volunteer Coach Bubba Reams said that the Livingston Academy Softball program does not have adequate facilities when compared to other surrounding programs. Reams mentioned that the current facilities are shared by the baseball and softball programs, which limits how much the teams can practice.

“I just think it’s right for our girls to have somewhere to go and have the ability to go practice when they want to cause right now if baseball’s got it on Monday on fifth block our girls can’t practice. If the weather outside is wet, they don’t got anywhere to go,” Reams said.

Reams said there are potential issues of boys and girls being in the same facility as the lockerrooms are only separated by one door. Reams also said the softball field needs an uplift and mentioned small dugouts as one of the big issues.

“If you put 10 girls in the dugout with a ballbag that’s about all the room we got,” Reams said. “Like I said, I carry 22 players in middle school softball, over half of them had to leave their bag out of the dugout and all of their stuff out of the dugout cause we couldn’t get everybody in the dugout.”

School Board Member Ricky Dodson said he has helped with field maintenance before and agreed the field does need an uplift. Reams said the field is constantly having to be worked on due to draining issues.

“I mean, we work on that field all the time,” Reams said. “We had a guy two weeks ago bring two skid steers, a mini x, and brought four of his guys and they built a french drain behind the back of the field trying to keep the water off the field. I mean water just floods the field, and when it floods the field, then here comes the gravel cause the parking lot is gravel instead of concrete, but like I said I mean, I know that would be nice to on the upgrades if we could get it concreted around through there cause a lot of these facilities where the bleaches are, everything is concreted and you don’t have to worry about that.”

Reams also mentioned upgrading a backstop and adding a net to the backstop to reduce foul balls going into the nearby cow pasture.

School Board Chairman William Abston said the Director of Schools Donnie Holman and the board will look at what can be done to improve the facilities.