Construction is moving along on Meridian Community College’s new sports complex on Highway 19 North with Lady Eagles softball hoping to throw out the first pitch of the season on the new field this spring.
Situated in a highly visible area at the intersection of Highway 19 and old Highway 11 at College Park, the new sports facility, to be named the Citizens National Bank Sports Complex, will be home to MCC’s softball, tennis and golf programs.
“Having the new facility will impact everything,” said MCC President Thomas M. Huebner Jr. “Recruiting has been dramatically better. Projects of this nature create energy and excitement on campus.
“We want to provide the best possible resources for our athletes to be able to be competitive, and this new sports complex can really be a place where our athletes can get the experiences they need,” he said.
The sports complex is located on property that was originally the site of the old Matty Hersee Hospital, a state-owned charity hospital and its School of Nursing. Both the hospital and nursing school closed in 1986, and MCC later acquired the property.
MCC and Citizens National Bank officials, as well as local business and community leaders, originally broke ground on the sports complex in 2022, but delays resulted from skyrocketing construction costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve had to go back to the drawing board multiple times based on cost estimates to get it to a more workable cost for us,” Huebner said.
That delay in the project turned out to be beneficial as construction costs had come down by the time work got underway earlier this summer.
Estimated to cost a little more than $7 million, the complex will include the Tommy McDonald Softball Field, along with spectator viewing stands, restrooms, a concession stand, a hitting facility for the softball team and a left field lounge area with picnic tables.
The artificial turf softball field will be a high-quality playing surface, and the sports complex will have state-of-the-art LED lights, Huebner said. Lady Eagles softball currently practices and plays home games at nearby Sammie Davidson Complex.
MCC’s tennis team presently practices on four courts near the Damon Fitness Center on the main campus, but uses the Northeast Tennis Center when hosting college matches and tournaments.
“In order to host a college tournament, you need six courts and we only have four, and the four we have are not in any shape to be able to play matches and even make practices a challenge,” Huebner said.
“So we made the decision that we were going to build this complex with high-quality, professional grade courts and that we would build eight of them so that we could accommodate the needs not only of our team but we envisioned being able to host regional matches and other events that are related to the tennis community as a whole here and not just the college community,” he added.
Weddington Hall, located alongside Highway 19, will also be included in the new sports complex after the medical and healthcare programs housed in the building were moved to Smith Hall. The building will be renamed Weddington Hart Field House and will be renovated to include locker rooms for softball, tennis and golf.
“The golf facility also will include a golf simulator which we already have on another part of the campus, and we are going to relocate it there and give them a team room and a place for the golf team to operate from, and then have their simulation facility there,” Huebner said. “We have a plan also to build a putting green for the golf team.”
Construction of the softball field and its facilities is part of phase one of the project and is expected to be completed in January. Tennis facilities are expected to be completed in March.
“In both cases, they are ahead of schedule on construction,” Huebner said. “We are grateful for that … and if the weather continues to cooperate, I think we will be ahead of schedule.”
He said, “Our absolute 100% goal is for us to have the 2025 softball season in the new complex.”
MCC will also be able to live stream softball games and tennis matches at the new complex, something it has not be able to do for softball games at Sammie Davidson.
“Believe it or not, people from all over the world are watching our athletic events,” he said. “It’s something we are really excited about, being able to add (softball and tennis) to our slate of opportunities for people who want to engage with Meridian Community College.”