Apopka High School Softball Earns STMA 2000 Field of the Year Award.

The softball complex at Apopka (Florida) High School has been a work in progress since 1998, according to Mike MacWithey, head coach, head groundskeeper, and all around everything else.

After serving as the school's assistant softball coach for 12 years, MacWithey accepted the head coaching position in 1996. He says, "When I took over, we had no girl's softball field. We practiced and played our home games at a nearby city field. Winning the District Championship that first year brought credibility to our program and helped us focus school and community attention on the lack of facilities. The school's very successful boys baseball program provided an example of what is required to build, maintain and operate a beautiful complex. This served as a motivation and an example for our girl's program.

"A concentrated lobbying effort by all involved earned a commitment for use of the school property between the existing baseball and football fields. With a rallying slogan of 'The Tradition Begins' we set out to build the finest softball facility in the state."

A parent of one of the players surveyed the parcel. The bases and fence lines were marked. The Orange County School Board supplied the infield material. MacWithey selected a local source with a small amount of sand in the clay to provide a relatively hard infield surface for his power-hitting team.

Then the outfield area was sprayed with glyphosate and tilled. Players were assigned to remove debris and hand rake the area. The area's native soil is high in "sugar" sand, fine in texture, but angular, so infiltration and percolation rates for the outfield area are good.

County personnel and equipment supplied the laser grading for the field. Once the infield material was put in place, they established a one percent slope toward the foul lines and toward the…