By their own admission, the Kingston City School District’s (KCSD) plans to ensure other athletic fields in the district were usable during the $18.7 million renovation of Dietz Stadium have not been entirely successful.
During a meeting of the Board of Education held on Tuesday, April 18, Joe Beichert, a parent of three KCSD students, chided trustees and district administrators for the state of the fields, particularly those at M. Clifford Miller Middle School and Chambers Elementary School, where spring sports like lacrosse are played, and where track and field teams practice while their Dietz home is closed due to extensive upgrades.
“This is unacceptable,” Beichert said, referring to a series of photographs that showed grassless fields in various states of disrepair. “I ask two things of this board, two simple things. First, to make sure that the people who are responsible for the overseeing the preparation of these fields, including board members and administrators, are held accountable for these failures. Secondly, I call on this board and the administration to be laser focused in correcting these issues over the next six months in preparation for the fall sports season and beyond? It’s time to act; it’s time to do the job. Our student athletes deserve better than this.”
Later in the meeting, Superintendent Paul Padalino addressed the issue, noting that he was on the fields that day and they were looking better than in Beichert’s photos.
“Those pictures were probably taken three weeks ago,” Padalino said. “The grass is much greener. But I’m not saying the fields are great because they’re not.”
Beichert noted that last November, school officials discussed its plans to aerate and seed its fields during the winter to prepare for the spring athletic season. Padalino said those efforts had not been successful.
“We did put on the solar blankets, we did aerate believing that that was going to help us grow the grass in that area,” Padalino said. “Last year this board agreed to let us put the chemicals on the lawn to kill all the weeds. Well, I was out there today and the weeds are back. There are dandelions everywhere, but the grass really isn’t ready to mow yet either.”
Padalino said another part of the problem is the continuous use of the fields.
“Those fields get pounded,” he said. “We have 66 sports offered in the Kingston City School District, and there are 29 of them going on right now. And these are all field sports.”
Last November, Director of Physical Education, Health and Athletics Rich Silverstein said Kingston would have to find a home for around 125 athletic events during the Dietz closure, most within the district itself.
M. Clifford Miller Middle School and the adjacent E.R. Crosby Elementary School already regularly featured sports fields used by Kingston High, including Gruner Field, home of the Tigers’ baseball team, which while Dietz is out of commission will also host field hockey in the fall. At Miller and Crosby, Old Burke Field is temporarily be the home of modified softball; Fields 1 and 2 will feature boys lacrosse and soccer, in the fall with the former also the site of cross country; Field 3 will also feature soccer, girls lacrosse, and girls flag football; Field 4 will welcome both soccer and girls lacrosse; Field 5 is the home of varsity girls lacrosse and modified football.
Meanwhile, at Chambers, there will be soccer and field hockey in the fall and track and field in the spring, including a dedicated training spot, as well as an isolated shot put and discus area. Softball, both varsity and JV, will also happen at Chambers.
But the district was unable to find the space within its own boundaries for everything: A large annual spring track and field event hosted by Kingston at Dietz Stadium will instead take place at F.D.R. High School in Hyde Park. And home games for the 2023 Kingston Tigers’ varsity football team will be played this fall at Rondout Valley High School, with all those games being played on Saturday afternoons as Rondout traditionally plays its home games on Friday nights.
Padalino added that the relatively mild winter meant some fields are drier than usual this spring, and thanks to local snowmobile and ATV enthusiasts, they’re also more torn up.
“Snowmobiles don’t care if there’s no snow, they still come riding across our lawns,” Padalino said, “People just tear up our, our property. And this year there wasn’t much snow, but the snowmobiles are still going to ride, which may be ten times worse.”
The superintendent stressed that the district would continue looking into ways to improve its athletic fields, both during the Dietz renovation and after it reopens.
“I’m not making excuses that these fields are great right now,” Padalino said. “They’re not. We expected them to be better.”
He added that Assistant Director of Facilities Dylan Bogart and his crew have been rolling the fields every day to ensure they’re as safe for use as possible.
“We’re making sure they’re smooth and don’t have divots,” Padalino said. “They’re not attractive, they’re not the best fields we we’ve ever played on…But as long as we keep using those fields, they’re not going to be green pastures.”
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