SPORTING GREEN
field DREAMS of
By Kevin Buckley ’13
A
fter more than three years of planning and construction, the renovations to JP Lang Field and the adjacent Margaret Hayward Playground have been completed. Located right down the street from Sacred Heart Cathedral’s campus, the park takes up an entire city block at the corner of Turk and Gough streets. Lang Field has long been the home of Fightin’ Irish softball, both for games and practices. Now, with the improvements completed to the space, other SHC sports such as baseball, lacrosse, soccer and football will be able to utilize the facility for practice, and lacrosse and soccer will now be able to use Lang as their home field for games. The Sacred Heart Cathedral Athletic Department and administration is proud to have partnered with the City of San Francisco and the Recreation and Parks Department to help make this project possible. Longtime SHC Athletic Director Phil Freed ’80 said he had been hoping for a while that the city would consider making improvements to Lang Field, as they had with other youth sport facilities such as Crocker-Amazon and Beach Cha-
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let, both of which are utilized for Sacred Heart Cathedral home soccer games. In early 2017, Freed finally got the call he had been waiting for. “When Rec and Park approached me about our school partnering with them by pitching in money, my immediate reaction was, absolutely, let’s do this.” Freed approached then SHC President Brother Ron Gallagher, FSC, with the city’s proposal, and he was met with fervent support. With the unanimous support of the Board of Regents, the leadership of Sacred Heart Cathedral’s administration agreed to financially support the renovations of JP Lang Field and Margaret Hayward Playground. Specifically, SHC financed the high quality artificial turf that was installed on the playing surface. “Without our partnership, Park and Rec told me they might not have been able to turf the field,” Freed said. In addition to the benefits SHC Athletics will reap from the space, it is hoped that the community and neighborhood at large will be improved as a result of this project as well. After being approached by SF Recreation and Parks, Freed immediately invited
“ When Park and Rec approached me about our school partnering with them by pitching in money, my immediate reaction was, absolutely, let’s do this.” PHIL FREED ’80 DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS
