The City High baseball and softball teams have never had a place of their own to practice batting, but this will change as a new indoor batting complex is being built at City High.

“In the past the baseball and softball kids have practiced in an amazingly wide array of places,” Athletic director Terry Coleman said. “This particular facility is going to give them one place that they can call home and have structured training year round and throughout the winter here in Iowa.”

The complex, which will cost approximately $175,000, was funded through private donations from around 180 individual donors.

“There was pretty broad based support for the project.” Coleman said.

The need for such a complex was made clear after the head baseball coach Brian Mitchell approached Mr. Coleman and Mr. Bacon with the issue.

“Twelve of the fourteen schools in the conference have some sort of indoor hitting facility, then clearly you’re behind the curb,” Coleman said.“In order for us to maintain our competitiveness with the other teams in our conference, this was just the next big facility project that needed to take place.”

The heated facility will feature moveable nets and pitching machines that will be available for coaches and teams to use throughout the year.

“I think the new facility will be really beneficial because we will finally be able to use it whenever we need instead of having to worry about finding somewhere to hit,” Shannon Stamp ‘17 said. “It will also give everyone the opportunity to put in extra work so by the start of the season next year, our team will already be strong and we’ll advance from there.”