New Scoreboard Installed at Luckett Field

RE Lee Electric, of Newington, Virginia, arrived early Thursday at Luckett Field to complete the installation of the long awaited new scoreboard for Alexandria City’s Luckett Field. The City field is the current home for the Cardinals varsity softball team.

Funded by the Bishop Ireton Athletic Booster Club in the spring of 2009, the NEVCO board was delivered at the end of the school year last spring, but also in the middle of a financially difficult time for all city agencies. As a result of this unbudgeted installation expense of the Ireton gift, the boosters went back to the drawing board and earmarked additional funds to partially defray the installation costs. With City Council approval this winter, installation moved ahead.

“Our goal was March 1st, but the February weather set us back,” explained Mac Slover, from the city’s youth division of Parks and Recreation. “There was also some unrelated construction in the vacinity of the ballpark,” noted Slover. The City is improving the entire area with the eventual addition of a transit bus maintenance facility, police substation, and significantly for the Cardinals, the addition of two, side-by-side soccer fields covered with artificial turf.

Those fields, and a new natural turf softball field are part of the City’s Witter Project, constructed with VDOT as another component of the overall Woodrow Wilson Bridge construction program, are located between the railroad right-of-way, the Telegraph Road overpass and the McDonalds on Duke Street west of Bishop Ireton. Those additional fields could offer the Cardinals a possible much needed area for practices for soccer and lacrosse.

“The Booster Club has taken another significant step in upgrading the facilities used by our athletes.” praised athletic director Bill Simmons. “From Frank Mann Field to Luckett Field, from the Iver Magnussen wrestling room to Father Godley Gym, the boosters have worked with us tirelessly to make the Cardinals’ athletic experience the best it can be. We are very grateful to our Boosters for another facility improvement.”