Tiger Stadium Undergoes Renovations
Football teams are made during the summer months, and in Greenville, so are the fields. Tiger Stadium next to Greenville Elementary is undergoing a $50,000 renovation plan. It’s a new look Head Coach Josh McLendon says is desperately needed.
McLendon should know, he spends most of his time at the field. In fact, he considers it his second office. This office is in need of some maintenance.
“It would hold water, it wouldn’t drain very well,” McLendon says of the old field. “It would get muddy. Lot of uneven spots out there.”
Thanks to the City of Greenville and Butler County Board of Education, the field is getting a much needed makeover. There will be a sprinkler system under the field, a new fence added, the field will be resurfaced with new turf, and mostly importantly, the field will be crowned.
“Crowning is real important, for the water to shed off of it,” says Public Works Director Milton Luckie. Luckie and his team are working on the field. “Where you have good drainage on it. Lot of football teams, they love football fields that have crowns in them.”
McLendon is looking forward to playing on the new turf. He’s hoping there will be a positive impact on his players’ game.
“Everybody can just say, ‘oh, it’s just some grass,'” he says. “But once you get out there and run around and you see what it’s like, hopefully what it’s gonna be like, it’s gonna be a major improvement. I think they’re really gonna, really gonna see a difference.”
Luckie agrees with the coach, that this is a long overdue project.
“Probably back in the forties, when it was put in,” he says. “But it’s time for an upgrade. It would get real soggy. This day and time, they’ve done a lot of work to know how to drain the water off the fields.”
But McLendon has no plans to stop renovations when the field is complete.
“We want a field house for dressing rooms, you know, we want to do that concessions stand, bathrooms, just upgrade the entire facility,” he says.
While there is still a lot of work to do, the crews believe they will be done in plenty of time for the Tigers’ first game on August 18.
