Belmont student-athletes on the baseball, softball and men’s and women’s golf teams now have their own indoor practice space at E.S. Rose Park.
Standing two stories tall with coaching offices, locker rooms and meeting rooms on the top floor and batting tunnels, a bullpen and golf bays on the bottom, the much-needed space will give four of Belmont’s teams a new home base.
“This will be the first time in 25 years that I’ve been at Belmont and we had our own locker room facility at the same place that we played,” baseball head coach Dave Jarvis said.
Before the facility opened, baseball players would sometimes use the parking lot of Rose Park as their dressing rooms, Jarvis said.
Baseball officially moved into the new facility on Sept. 24, so players now have dedicated locker space where they can don their Bruin gear.
Softball head coach Laura Matthews also views the new indoor facility as a game-changer for the softball program, especially since cold, rainy months leading up to the season can affect the players’ quality of training.
“Our sport is very weather-dependent, so if we get a rainy day in January or February when we’re preparing for the season and it’s cold, we’ll have a space where we can train our athletes. So we’re super excited about it,” she said.
Though primarily the baseball and softball teams will use this new building, there is space inside dedicated to the men’s and women’s golf teams as well.
The downstairs practice area holds three hitting bays where golfers can practice their game. Tracking technology in the bays reports how fast they swing their clubs.
“It’s definitely gonna be another factor that’s going to help us get better,” said women’s golf head coach Olivia Jordan in an interview before the fall season.
With this new addition, the golf teams won’t need to worry when poor weather rolls in over Nashville, and neither do softball and baseball batters and pitchers.
“They have the opportunity to go over there and work on inclement weather days, and if they want to get some work on their own, they can now do that,” said Jarvis.
“It’s a tremendous value to each program and hopefully to our student-athletes.”
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PHOTO: The outside of the two-story practice facility. Belmont Vision / Jessica Mattsson.
This article was written by A.J. Wuest.