Galloway Sports - Baseball

The Galloway School has various sports for its students to participate in, including basketball, baseball, and swimming. The baseball season is in full swing, and many good things are happening, but also lots that can be improved.

Langston Williams, a freshman on Galloway’s baseball team, states that they have great team morale no matter the win or loss and have each other’s backs during the games and practices. Many of the team members are good friends and easily get along with each other and the coaches. The team spirit is high, and they believe that they can win each game without doubt.

However, regarding the negatives of the baseball season, Dylan stated that the facility could use some improvements and that the field is extremely small, allowing other teams to score easy runs by hitting home runs. For many of the teams that the Galloway team hosts, players can easily hit a home run since the distance from the fence to home plate is not very far. The field they play on often needs to be cut since the grass is too tall, the dirt is extremely soggy, and there are large ditches in the grass that can make it difficult to practice and act as a tripping hazard. After getting an ankle injury when playing basketball, Dylan nearly reaggravated his ankle injury when running on the field because of the uneven surfaces. Evan added that during rainy times of the year, the field floods easily, and the dirt gets extremely soggy to the point that it is almost impossible to run smoothly when fielding or running the bases. Along with that, when there are periods of no rain, the ground dries up and cracks. 

Now, to fix these issues, there can be many ways to do this. The first idea is to find ways to make drainage systems that help disperse water and prevent the field from being destroyed by excess water. Extending the distance between the fence and the home plate to help mitigate the number of home runs hit and help Galloway have a field that is more similar in size to other high school baseball fields in the state. One last solution that I would implement would be fixing uneven surfaces by placing dirt in each of the ditches and cutting the grass frequently to help improve the setting of the field and the safety of the players from both teams.

Overall, Galloway has a good-faith and inspiring baseball team that wants to do its best to represent their school. However, their concerns with the current state and condition of the baseball field leave many of them questioning whether the experience of playing baseball will improve during their time playing at Galloway. Hopefully, in the near future, Galloway will address these issues at hand and improve the sport for current and future players of Galloway’s baseball team. I interviewed coach Kevin Walker, who coaches both the softball and baseball teams, told me about the field being sold to the city and the quality being heavily lowered because the city does not cooperate with the school. The field is also maintained only during the season rather than the whole year. If this were the case, the field would be in far better condition and there would not be any issues with the grass height and ditches. A solution he proposed to me was playing games at Oglethorpe University or even Georgia State since their fields are in much better condition and Galloway used to play games there in the past.