City sports fields soon to be ready for action

Apr 3, 2019 | 5:09 PM

KAMLOOPS — Now that spring has arrived, most of the city’s sports fields are now open for play, with finishing touches being put on the remaining spaces.

City of Kamloops Parks Civic Facilities Manager, Jeff Putnam says staff have been working to bring fields up to playable conditions now that the snow has melted away.

“Because of the weather, an unusually cold March, and not a lot of snow cover, the frost went twice as deep in the ground than it normally does,” he explains. “So it, unfortunately, delayed a little bit of kind of getting started. But I’m happy to report that starting this week, all the minor baseball fields are open.”

Putnam says all the rest of the city’s fields, including slo pitch, soccer, and all the areas at McArthur Island are expected to be open by April 13.

“One thing that comes with sports fields is washrooms. A lot of people are asking me, ‘What’s going on with washrooms?’,” he says. “Well, I’m very happy to report that they’re all open this week as well so there won’t be any issues with that.”

As the fields start to open up, Putnam says work has already begun on the nature park and disc golf changes for McArthur Island. 

“So we’re starting work on phase one of that, and we’ll be removing some old bridges and adding some pathways, and adding a disc golf course. We’re just in the design phase for that right now.” 

Putnam adds the city is also freshening up the old mini-golf course, with all those improvements expected to come by late summer.