The new stadium is a marvelous feat of engineering and a huge advancement for the Bolles community because of the new advancements made.
“Bolles has a tradition of excellence, and it is proof that there is not only excellence on the team but excellence in all of our facilities,” said Coach Boswell, the Dean of Students and the head baseball coach.
The baseball stadium needed a renovation because it was not fit for everyone and there have not been many improvements, as other facilities are becoming more advanced.
“So we are trying to stay up with the times, and this has been a process of about 10 years that we’ve been working on, trying to build our own facility. I’ve been here 25 years and we haven’t done much upgrading to it,” said Boswell.
The process of trying to get a renovation has taken about 10 years and the construction process should end soon. Boswell explained that raising the money to build the stadium started around 3 or 4 years ago. December of 2024 is when the construction started and the stadium should be ready for use at Thanksgiving.
Bolles Athletic Director Rock Pillsbury, also added on to this statement that the opening day of the stadium is February 13.
The baseball stadium is named after Chipper Jones ‘90, who graduated from Bolles and spent 19 years playing for the Atlanta Braves. The stadium cost 3.7 million dollars and has many major upgrades from the previous one with new facilities and an increased seating capacity.
There will be a new meeting room for coaches to meet with players, a new locker room with showers, and two new media towers to hold the press box. There will be new dugouts and new field houses for the varsity and junior varsity teams. The stadium will be able to hold 300 people and is by far the best in North Florida, according to Boswell.
The new baseball stadium is bigger and better looking than before, and Boswell hopes that more students will come to attend Bolles and join the baseball team.
“I like everything, I’m so happy for our players to be on a great field, have their own clubhouse, and really take ownership of it. It’s just going to be absolutely beautiful for them, it’s the first thing you see when you come onto Bolles campus. I think everybody is going to look at it and be Wow, that’s just absolutely beautiful,” said Boswell.
“We leveled it, we added irrigation, and we added new drainage, so the baseball field has really been improved,” said Coach Pillsbury.
There are other projects are coming for Bolles Athletics, including improvements to the softball field, the Uible Pool, the Hunt Family Soccer Complex, and adding simulators for the golf team.
