First things first.<\/p>\n
Amazing! Kudos to Skipper Fritz Hamburg and the SJU Hawks Baseball squad who swept Dayton over the weekend and who now hold a 14-1 record in the Atlantic 10 Conference.<\/p>\n
Next, I am married to Jim Brown who has been coaching since 1977, starting with the Narberth Colts, along with Barry Urban.<\/p>\n
Actually, in April of 1973, Jim and I first met at Penn Valley Elementary School for an adult softball team tryout, sponsored by a local Narberth tavern called Patton\u2019s Caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n
So, ever since, and as Jim\u2019s wife, I have been in the hunt for fields, particularly baseball fields.<\/p>\n
During ten years of teaching at Valley Forge Military Academy, I introduced Jim\u2019s legendary Sunday Morning Baseball game to the VFMAC field on North Wayne Avenue.<\/p>\n
While I think of it, I also brought Nick DuComb\u2019s DELCO team there.<\/p>\n
And, when I was teaching Jackson Birtwistle at Radnor Middle School, I met his Mom Heidi, currently Senior Associate Director of Athletics, who helped get the Eastern University baseball field for SMB.<\/p>\n
Also when I taught at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, the first thing I did was to check out their baseball field.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, SMB soon played there.<\/p>\n
From 1980 to 2007, as Co-Director of Rosemont-Villanova Civic Association Sports at Harriton, I witnessed Jim fashion fields anywhere and everywhere for K-8 soccer and baseball.<\/p>\n
For Narberth Athletic Association NFL Flag Football at Welsh Valley, Jim and I line eight fields for the eight-week league of over 500 players.<\/p>\n
If there is a field, Jim Brown will find it, or make it.<\/p>\n
On one occasion, at what was then PPL Park, Jim carved out a pick-up soccer game for the random kids who were bored by the Philadelphia Union match-up.<\/p>\n
So, last Thursday, amidst banking, errands, and lunch at Pizzeria Vetri, we knocked out four fields.<\/p>\n
The backstory to this was standing with Wally Orlov at the Lower Merion v Garnet Valley game at South Ardmore the day before.<\/p>\n
Wally who is the czar of Lower Merion Little League was baffled by the persistent shortage of fields in Lower Merion in the face of year-to-year extraordinary sign-ups.<\/p>\n
As a gauge, Wally is working on background checks and clearances for approximately 390 coaches. WOW!<\/p>\n
So it is true that \u201cYa gotta luv Wally\u201d \u2013 for all that he does.<\/p>\n
As Will Thomas, founder and manager of the Narberth Outsiders DELCO team, and I were chatting with Wally, he asked about field potentials.<\/p>\n
Hmm, I dug into my institutional knowledge as Jim Brown\u2019s wife and I came up with four locations.<\/p>\n
I remembered, having been enrolled in the NELI program at the Bryn Mawr School of Social Work, that there is a wide-open field behind the parking lot, off Airdale Road in Rosemont.<\/p>\n
Jim and I reconnoitered that area on Thursday past. The portable goal posts and blocking sleds on location were very unused.<\/p>\n
We also re-acquainted ourselves with the former Saint Justin Martyr Roman Catholic Church property at Tower Lane and Hagys Ford Road, adjacent to Welsh Valley Middle School.<\/p>\n
Last fall, we had walked out the length and width for that area in case we needed it for NFL Flag.<\/p>\n
Of course, Jim and I already knew well the field behind Merion Elementary School because it was in the back yard of the Bottoms Brothers who held regular adult softball games there for years.<\/p>\n
So, the icing on the cake . . . Through thirty-two years of teaching at Lower Merion High School, I had gotten pretty familiar with the \u201cwhat was what\u201d vis \u00e0 vis playable fields for young kids.<\/p>\n
I well remembered Butcher Field at the back of the LMHS property, and sure enough, last Thursday, its generous dimensions were being used by a group of high school students playing ultimate frisbee.<\/p>\n
The field look and maintenance were so impressive that I took a video and sent it right away to Wally.<\/p>\n
So what happens next? See what you can do.<\/p>\n
Contact your LM Commissioner and LMSD School Directors and ascertain a \u201cwhat\u2019s what\u201d about the immediate after-school hours usage of Butcher Field.<\/p>\n
Ask Wally how many Lower Merion Little League games take place in the course of a weekend.<\/p>\n
If the Commissioners and School Board care about kids, something good will happen, your tax dollars will be put to good use, and people will say, \u201cYa gotta luv Wally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary and Jim Brown ran Rosemont-Villanova Civic Association Sports for twenty-seven years at Harriton High School and have served on the Board of the Narberth Athletic Association for many years. Jim Brown is also longtime President of Main Line American Legion Baseball. For more information, visit https:\/\/www.narberthaa.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First things first. Amazing! Kudos to Skipper Fritz Hamburg and the SJU Hawks Baseball squad who swept Dayton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[182,183,185,184,186,200,139,1559,28,199],"class_list":["post-164561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-local-news","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-township","tag-montgomery-county","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-mlt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}