photo by: Conner Becker/Journal-World

The view of the infield at Ice Field from the park entrance off West 27th Street.

A longtime coach wants to do his part for youth baseball and softball in Lawrence.

Dirk Wedd spent 40 years coaching football and baseball at the high school and collegiate levels, spending more than half that tenure at Lawrence High School. Five years removed from his coaching career, he is now drafting a preliminary sketch for a facility that could help the city preserve youth baseball and softball.

The project, targeting Holcom Park’s baseball complex along Lawrence Avenue, includes full turf conversions for all four baseball fields located at the 31-acre recreation complex. The conversion process for the infields and outfields for each site carries a price tag of over $3 million.

Opened in 1976, Holcom Park, along with Lawrence’s Youth Sports Complex, serves as a host site for the city’s recreational baseball program each summer. The park is a six-minute drive from Raymond A. Schwegler Elementary just off Clinton Parkway.

“There are kids in our community that don’t have the opportunity to get in a car and go to Rock Chalk (Park) or the (Youth Sports Complex),” Wedd said. “The location was very important to me and then being able to give both boys and girls, whether it’s eight years old up to 14 or 15, a really first-class facility which they don’t have at that age.”

In 2013, Lawrence’s recreational baseball program fielded 10 teams for its 10-and-under league, according to the city’s website. This summer, just four teams were listed for that same age group.

By comparison, Shawnee County, home to over 178,000 residents, fielded 11 teams for its 10-and-under league this summer.

Wedd feels the downward trend in area kids sticking around to play ball — they’re instead opting to play for traveling teams and clubs teams based outside of Lawrence — should concern families.

“I think we’ve really failed our kids as far as giving them an opportunity to excel in baseball and softball,” Wedd said. “The number of teams is dropping yearly and I think a lot of it has to do with facilities. We want our kids to compete at the highest level in high school, and, yet, we don’t have any facilities for them before they get to high school.”

Wedd’s ultimate goal is to bring Lawrence up to speed with similarly-designed projects in Topeka, Ottawa and Paola, which all maintain turf baseball and softball facilities. Wedd tabbed another longtime high school football coach, Mark Littrell of the Meriden-based Mammoth Sports Construction, to simulate what other communities have already done.

photo by: Submitted photo

An overhead look of Holcom Park’s baseball complex drawn up by Mammoth Sports Construction.

photo by: Submitted photo

Desired donor panels would be part of the project, shown here laid along the first and third baselines within a mockup drawn by Mammoth Sports Construction.

Littrell’s renderings made their way to the City of Lawrence’s Parks and Recreation Department, as well as several area stakeholders and banks, but Wedd has yet to come away with any concrete commitments.

A spot for Wedd’s project is years away at best, Porter Arneill, Lawrence Parks and Recreation’s assistant director for arts and culture, said in an email to the Journal-World.

“In the evolution for these types of projects, until we know that outside funding is committed, we are not able to introduce a project as part of the city’s annual budget process,” Arneill said.

Leaning on economic upsides for the project, Wedd sees an improved facility as a gateway for the city to become a destination for scouting and traveling teams, such as Perfect Game or Prep Baseball Report, in turn raising the number of ballgames played annually at the complex.

Halff, a Dallas-based consultant firm, projects families in the U.S. spend an average of $700 to $1,000 per month on youth sports programs. Additionally, that same firm estimates that the $39.7 billion directly spent on amateur and youth sports tourism in 2021 resulted in a total economic output of $91.8 billion across the country.

The upsides of that foot traffic can’t be understated, Wedd said.

“They would die to come to Lawrence,” Wedd said. “Whether it’s a runoff from Johnson County or Topeka, where they have more teams than fields, but one way or another you’d have a huge impact on this community financially.”

Wedd, still in the early stages of acquiring financial support for the project, plans on taking his idea to several Kansas City-area institutions and state-wide youth sports organizations this fall.