In the wake of the revealing of a brand new baseball facility on the campus of Middlesex College in Edison, Rutgers baseball coach Steve Owens and athletic director Pat Hobbs gave some insight on the project, as well as future plans for projects around the Rutgers campus.
“It’s exciting for us,” Owens said. “We started talking about this about a year ago. I think for us to be able to play some games over here and have it marketed by Rutgers and by Middlesex County, it could incorporate more fans. Our fanbase was pretty good in the last couple of years, especially playing night games.”
Owens also mentioned an increase in the quality of fan experience, as he noted that “people will be sitting in very nice seats, and they will have all the nice amenities that you would have watching a professional game.”
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In terms of using the new facilities as a recruiting chip for his team, Owens explained how creating a better home-field advantage could help his players.
“From a players standpoint, when we play teams in our conference the fans are around the field and over the field,” Owens said. “When the big pitch happens or the big at-bat it gets noisy, so creating more home-field atmosphere, an advantage, is really important. That type of atmosphere is also attractive from a recruiting standpoint and puts you in a different category, since kids want to play in those kinds of atmospheres.”
Owens also brought light to some of the future plans when the Scarlet Knights play at Middlesex Park, while also keeping Bainton Field, their current home, in use.
“We’re continuing to improve our own facilities on campus with more to come,” he said. “This is a partnership that I think can be very healthy and productive to both groups, and the area too.
In referencing any future changes to Bainton, he maintained that more additions could be coming in the future.
“We just did quite a bit of infrastructure with the new lightings and the entertainment package and the video board,” Owens said. “The field has been done in the past three years, we have an indoor [facility] that’s very nice that’s been done in the past five years, but also have the infrastructure in place to accommodate Big Ten Network games and instant replay. The next plan is for seating, press box, dugouts, bathrooms, those types of things, at a higher level than we usually have.”
Owens also gave some insight on how this new project can help foster a relationship with Middlesex College in general.
“It’s very evident that this was a group effort,” he said. “With some state funding and a lot of backing. I think it would be great, maybe, if more kids that go to Middlesex College will do their next two years at Rutgers, with more integration, and I could see that being very healthy.”
Athletic director Pat Hobbs also gave insight on the announcement as well as the outlook for the future.
“It’s a great day for Rutgers baseball and Rutgers athletics,” he said. “But also for Middlesex County and for the state of New Jersey, because it puts the emphasis on baseball as an important sport for our state, we’ve got great history of baseball in our state, obviously Rutgers has great history. To be able to play in a first-class venue like that which will have state-of-the-art amenities for our fans so close to our campus, it’s just a great day.”
Hobbs also explored the possibility of working with other parts of Middlesex College in the future.
“When you look at the entire plan and the athletic facilities that they’re building, it would be great, maybe even in that stadium, to play a lacrosse game or a soccer game,” he said. “It’s going to be configured in a way that allows for that, so I think we’ll continue to explore opportunities together as we go forward.”
He was also able to shed some light on the future of the on-campus facilities for baseball and softball.
“We obviously still need to do work at Bainton Field, we still need to do work for our softball program, and we’ll do that,” he said. “We’ll have to play our weekday games on campus, there will probably be some conflicts that will arise, so you have to have a good venue on campus, but it does decrease the pressure in terms of the quality of that. You can build something nice where, this is going to be a really spectacular facility. We’ll do something on campus to improve for baseball and softball, hopefully in the near future as well.”
Hobbs also mentioned a target date for the fall of this year to reveal the master plan for athletic facilities across campus. The unveiling of the Middlesex Park facility did provide some modification to the plan, Hobbs noted, as building a new facility on campus with all of the proper amenities would be expensive and could set back the timeline, and he said it “dovetails very nicely with what we want to do with the master plan.” Hobbs also added there are still some tweaks to be made, but it should be out in the fall.
Also coming in the fall will be an announcement regarding the football team’s indoor practice facility, as Hobbs stressed the importance of it not only to head coach Greg Schiano and his program, but to the university as a whole. He acknowledged that the construction of the facility will not be cheap, but showed confidence in fans and donors showing up to help with the cost.
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