Stadium Lights at Te Kori Scott Point
Te Kaunihera o Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland Council, are building New Zealand’s first fully sustainable sports park at Scott Point. The park will comprise three main areas: an area for sports and active recreation, an informal recreation area, and an area of ecological restoration and conservation.
The Sustainable Sports park master plan design includes two lit baseball diamonds, three football fields and two artificial turf fields. This park will become one of the home fields for North Shore City Baseball Club and Albany and Greenhithe Football Clubs.
One of the final steps in the construction of the first baseball diamond is stadium lights. Stadium lights support the ability to train and play on the fields without any natural light, on cloudy days, and during the evenings. Stadium lights are designed in a way to not disturb neighbours and they don’t lead to excessive wear and tear on the grass due to the infield being turf. These types of lights do exist for other sports, but this will be a first for baseball.
When following a trip to South Korea for a youth baseball tournament, a North Shore Baseball parent commented:
“The players based overseas that have access to better training facilities, particularly with quality lights, had a higher level of skills than our tamariki. The ability to have access to training fields later in the evening isn’t just for accessibility, but to support our young people that are wanting to move into High Performance and compete Internationally at a higher level.”
The difference that lights will make will be huge! We thank Auckland Council for securing funding for the lights.
Check out our video (made prior to funding being secured)…
Stafford Bounce
The “Stafford Bounce” is the unique variability of the path taken by balls as they carom off the Stafford Park playing surface. It almost seems as if the ball is alive and enjoys making infielders look silly. It’s a bespoke feature of this beautiful ground that is personified by “Ballsy” aka. “El Diablo del Beisbol” – the Stafford Bounce mascot (pictured).
No Stafford Bounce products are currently available for sale. Email camryn.brown@nscbaseball.co.nz if you’d like to see Ballsy on any merchandise in future!