WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL)—With spring baseball season just around the corner, the City of Wichita Falls is making some much-needed big improvements to the sports complex over on Sheppard Access Road, after funding was approved by city councilors last fall, work began immediately. Once this project is complete and the baseball and softball tournaments begin, Parks and Rec Athletic Coordinator, Travis Pence said our economy could see a major boost.

If you’re like me, then you can’t wait for the strikes, the hits, and the scores. And come this spring, instead of traveling to the DFW or OKC area for tournaments, we’ll be able to host them right here in Wichita Falls.

“We’re changing all of our grass fields over and changing them into artificial turf, and we’ve been vying for this for quite a few years and it’s finally coming true,” Pence said.

This new 3.3 million dollar project comes with changes to fields one through four at the Wichita Falls sports complex, and Pence believes it could have a major impact on our community.

“In all reality, what we’re hoping to bring people in from out of town instead of all of us traveling to Dallas to play in all these tournaments, now we can get some of these out-of-town teams to come up here and play and when they do that, of course, they’re going to be staying in our hotels eating at our restaurants and shopping at our grocery stores,” Pence said.

Pence said not only are these fields going to be used for big tournaments, but they’re also getting more use out of them besides just baseball and softball.

“Not only tournaments and everything like that, but it’ll also help improve our league play. We play adult softball out here, but it’ll also offer soccer, flag football, kickball, and a couple of other sports we’re looking at probably bringing in into the future,” Pence said.

The old saying goes, if you build it they will come.
Well, since this complex is already built, I guess the question is if you improve it, will they stay?
We’ll see come springtime.

Pence said they began the improvements back in October of last year, and if weather permits, he hopes the fields will be open come March 1st.