Dear Editor: As hopefully most of you are aware, Ridgway is currently working on their Athletic Park master plan. As a board member for Ouray County Baseball (a local nonprofit that runs a baseball program for the youth of Ouray County – both boys and girls are welcome), I’ve been very invested in this process, but it’s come to my attention that not everyone knows our program exists!
In brief, there used to be a high school baseball team in Ridgway that ended around 2006. After a 10-year hiatus, a group of interested parents got together and gave it their all to revive the program. We have spent the last seven years rebuilding the program, fundraising money and donating countless man hours totaling well over $20,000 to make Frontier Field (by Chipeta) usable again and volunteer coaching nearly 100 kids aged 4-14 across seven teams — all while sharing just one baseball field. (The old field by the elementary has been converted to an outdoor learning space and the school is unfortunately not interested in making it a usable baseball field again.)
Our program has been growing exponentially every year, and as we add junior varsity and varsity teams, we will easily have at least 120 youth involved across nine teams. We are also hoping to build up enough interest to start having dedicated softball teams as well for girls who want to play softball instead of baseball. This doesn’t include the 60 locals involved in the adult coed softball league that currently plays only in Ouray due to a lack of field space in Ridgway!
In short, we truly need to have two working ballfields in the Athletic Park in order to properly support baseball & softball in our community. There are currently 3 proposals on the town website for the athletic park area – and two give priority to including solar panels instead of including a desperately needed athletic field in the Athletic Park.
We urge you to contact the town to let them know you support Option C. Youth and adult sports deserve to be the focus and priority in the Athletic Park, including having 2 ballfields and an appropriate amount of off-street parking available for soccer, pickleball, and baseball events instead of including non-athletic elements like solar panels and a dog park.
We hope to see you at a baseball game next spring!
Josey Scoville Ridgway
