Field of Dreams

SPORTING GREEN field of DREAMS

By Kevin Buckley ’ 13

After 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 Chalet, 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

another neighboring school to join the partnership. “We felt that the Chinese American School might be interested in partnering with us, since their campus is so close. They said yes, but made clear that their interest wasn’t so much in using Lang, but was more in using our Practice Field.” The Coach Bill Henneberry ’48 Practice Field sits at the northeast corner of Eddy and Gough Streets, and is used just about every day for SHC practices. “The leadership of the Chinese American School made clear that our field is a more desirable space for their needs, particularly because it’s smaller and more enclosed. So, we agreed to give them more access to our Practice Field in exchange for their partnership with the city.” In what turned out to be a major winwin for both school communities, Sacred Heart Cathedral will be able to widely utilize Lang Field, while the Chinese American School will have greater access to the Coach Bill Henneberry ’48 Practice Field. Due to SHC’s close proximity to Lang Field, our Athletic Department will be able to have practices on the space when no other schools are there, such as in the mornings before school or in the early afternoon. In his discussions with Rec and Park, Freed made it clear that he wanted to be able to host lacrosse and soccer games on the field: “I was hoping that it would be a space comparable to size and scope to Beach Chalet or Crocker-Amazon, and we got that and more.” Physical Education classes are already being held on the field, both before and during school hours. In addition, rather than having to travel across town for home games, the Fightin’ Irish soccer and lacrosse squads will be able to walk down the street from campus to get to their home field. The benefits of this project for both SHC and the community at large are readily apparent. In addition to the high quality multipurpose turf field, the Lang Field project is also complete with a brand new community building and new basketball courts available for public use. Sacred Heart Cathedral is proud to have partnered with the City of San Francisco and the Recreation and Parks Department to make this project a reality. “This really is a new era for Fightin’ Irish Athletics,” Freed said. “We’ll be seeing the true impact of this project for many years to come.”