Baseball program more than halfway toward matching $500,000 pledge
Photo courtesy of CMU Athletics.
In the four months since Central Michigan baseball received an anonymous $500,000 matching donation for an indoor training facility, the program has raised "nearly $300,000" from other donors, Athletics Director Dave Heeke said.
The Performance Development Center, a 7,000 to 7,500 square-foot turf complex, is planned to be built adjacent to the team’s clubhouse at Theunissen Stadium. The facility became possible Sept. 28 when it was announced that an anonymous donor gave $500,000 and pledged to match up to another $500,000 in donations raised by the Athletics Department for the facility.
“We are in the midst of having numerous conversations with people who are supportive of the baseball program to help realize the ($500,000) match,” Heeke said. “Our generous donor has committed essentially $1 million to the baseball program. Our goal is to match as much of that $500,000 (as) we can.”
The program has until June 1 to meet the $500,000 goal, which would give the baseball program $1.5 million in donations toward the practice facility.
Heeke said the plan is to have the facility built and ready for use by next winter.
“We are designing and developing the facility as we speak,” Heeke said. “We have an architectural firm who is helping us do that and a design firm. Our intention is to go out for bid sometime in the next couple months.”
Heeke said the Indoor Athletic Complex, which operates from 5 a.m. to midnight every day, is overused and is too small of a space for every team to practice in — especially as CMU adds more sports like women's lacrosse.
“One of our priorities of this is to take baseball (practices) out of the (IAC), so there are more hours there for our other sports," Heeke said. “This will allow a space for more hitting time for baseball and for whatever else we can do in there. It provides more flexibility and that’s what we need to do. We need more indoor space and we’re going to look for additional ways to do that. We don’t have enough to meet the needs of our program.”
