BrightStar Baseball Field Press Release
Good evening and thank you ALL for being here. City Manager, Marc Maxwell cannot be with us this evening as planned. I want to welcome Mayor Pro Tem, Harold Nash, City Council members, current and past Bright Star Baseball Board of Directors, and our Bright Star Baseball sponsors who have joined us this evening. Bright Star Baseball begins its 11th year of serving Hopkins County and surrounding counties. Over the past 10 years, we have served over 1,500K youth in the community. In 2013 Bright Star Baseball was a vision and dream to be able to offer such a program here in Sulphur Springs to serve the youth within the community with unique abilities. Marc Maxwell and the City Council believed in the vision from the start. Bright Star Baseball would not be what it is today without the support from the city and the community of Sulphur Springs, so again “Thank You” for being here and “Thank You” for your continued support.
In January 2015, we presented our plans to the City Council to build an all-weather field for our league. At that time the cost estimate was $500K! The field was something that we were so passionate about for multiple reasons, one being because of the uniqueness of our league, some of our players depend on their expensive medical equipment to maneuver the field. It is difficult for them to maneuver safely on a traditional field. In addition, after a rainstorm, we can’t play our regularly scheduled ball games because of muddy field conditions. Currently, we use a city field, so we don’t have the opportunity to reschedule our games on different days of the week. The city council was so gracious in supporting our league that they voted unanimously to set aside the field we are standing on today as the future home of Bright Star Baseball, Celebration Field! Over the past 9 years, as a board, we have continuously worked hard to raise money to build the field! We’ve never given up on our mission.
In January 2019, we announced our partnership with The Miracle League, a National Organization in Conyers, GA, that serves and supports baseball leagues for individuals of all abilities. They are well known for their beautiful all-weather baseball parks. There were two reasons why we chose to partner with The Miracle League. One is that there’s no age limit to max out of the league, meaning that a player can play if they want to play, whereas most city leagues players age out at 18. Two, our partnership with The Miracle League provides us access to the building plans of a custom-designed, rubberized turf field that would accommodate our players, this all-weather field allows players to play safely and help prevent injuries. Once we raise the funding, we could build an all-weather baseball field that supports our players, especially those who depend on wheelchairs and other assistive devices to play baseball.
Now that I’ve given you some background about our league over the years, we’ve come to why we are here today. In July of 2023, I received a call from Marc Maxwell, asking me, how much money have you raised? Knowing what he was referring to I said, just shy of $200K. Marc said, let’s build a field, it’s time! He shared with me that Texas Parks and Wildlife made changes to its grant application qualifications and Bright Star Baseball now qualifies for the grant. We chatted more about the details, and he asked me to provide him with a new cost estimate for the field since the original one was 9 years old. Today’s field cost is approximately $706K. In August of 2023, the City of Sulphur Springs submitted the grant application on behalf of Bright Star Baseball to build Celebration Field! In January 2024, we were notified that the City of Sulphur Springs grant application submitted on behalf of Bright Star Baseball for $535,500 had been approved! With the grant award of $535,500 together with Bright Star Baseball’s $184K, we are building a field! Our board of directors and I are thrilled to share this news with you! It has been a long time coming, and the joy we feel as a board is nothing short of sincere gratitude to everyone on this journey with us! The BEST is yet to come!
Thank you ALL for participating in this exciting moment for Bright Star Baseball!
Now, I invite Mayor Pro Tem, Harold Nash to say a few words.
