Lights Up!

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

The lights around the baseball and softball fields at the new athletic complex are up and ready to shine.

Workers erected the 10 lighting structures on Friday, and sod was put down on the softball field on Thursday.

In June, Musco Sports Lighting in Oskaloosa decided to donate all the lighting for the new baseball and softball fields. The donation, worth $400,000, included equipment and installation for state-of-the-art LED lighting.

In October, the district approved a proposal from Veenstra Construction out of Oskaloosa to do the work necessary to set the bases for light poles and fixtures. The bid came to $3,000 per light fixture, for a total of $30,000, which will come out of the project’s contingency fund.

Musco’s donation was made possible largely due to Diane Crookham-Johnson, a 1984 graduate of Charles City High School and one of the daughters of Joe Crookham, the principal owner, president and CEO of Musco Lighting, which has installed lighting systems at some of the biggest indoor and outdoor sporting facilities in the country.

Crookham-Johnson has her own law practice in Oskaloosa and is a former Iowa State Board of Education member, and has been involved with Musco for a long time. She said she and her father had been aware of the problems with flooding at the old softball and baseball fields and the efforts to raise money to build new ones on the Charles City campus.

In March, the board approved the building of a grade 5-12 athletic complex that includes a softball and baseball diamond and will sit on the high school/middle school campus. The site is located on land adjacent to the high school and middle school, along Comet Drive.

The district anticipates both diamonds will be ready for play at the start of the season next spring.