ABOVE: Members of the Fairmont Baseball Association, Fairmont Rotary Club and Martin County Area Foundation work together to put up new batting cages at the Winnebago Avenue Sports Complex in Fairmont on Saturday. First row, from left: John Lund, Erik Karre and Terry Malherek. Back row, from left: Don Waletich, Brandon Edmundson and Chris Gerhardt.

FAIRMONT– Over the weekend several batting cages were put up at the Winnebago Avenue Sports Complex in Fairmont. The project was a joint effort between the Fairmont Baseball Association, Fairmont Rotary Club and Martin County Area Foundation.

Fairmont Baseball Association president, Ryan Schmidtke, said that batting cages for the community is something the association has been talking about for a long time as there hasn’t been easy, local access to batting cages for youth and families to use.

“We started doing some fundraising over the last few years and talked to the city Park Board and got approval to place batting cages down here at Winnebago diamonds,” Schmidtke said.

For Schmidtke personally, he said this is something he’s wanted to see since he started coaching when one of his kids was in 4th grade. Now that they’re in high school, the project has come to fruition.

“As you’re doing batting practice with kids, you can shag balls in the field all day but it’s a lot easier when you have a cage,” Schmidtke said.

That’s where the Fairmont Rotary Club and Martin County Area Foundation came in. Each group was able to pitch in $5,000 for the project. The total cost of the project was about $21,000.

While $1,000 of Rotary’s funds came from the local group, $4,000 was given to the club from its district. As part of obtaining that money, the group needed to provide sweat equity so on Saturday several members were on hand to help put up the cages.

“We’ve been trying to do at least one service project a month and then a larger project for the year. Part of what we like to do is projects that we can do locally,” said Rotary member Brandon Edmundson.

He said this is the first time in quite a while that the club has accessed grant money. Member Terry Malherek added that the Rotary Club has money available and they thought this would be a good project to use it for.

Chris Gerhardt, vice chairperson of the Martin County Area Foundation, said, ” We absolutely support any community collaborative project resulting in physical assets to the community, especially youth, that is open and accessible to the public.”

Gerhardt said the project fits within the foundation’s mission to improve the quality of life in Martin County.

“It’s nice to see different area groups working together,” Edmundson said.

“The grants really helped this project come to fruition,” Schmidtke said.

He said last fall they finished the concrete work and the project was wrapped up over the weekend when the cages were put up.

While the process of securing the money and getting the batting cages up took some time, now that everything is ready Schmidtke said they’ll start being used right away this week.

“Our youth programs, third grade through ninth grade, will be practicing out here Monday through Thursday starting April 11,” he said.

The hope is that when teams from across southern Minnesota come for tournaments that they can utilize the batting cages as well.

Schmidtke said he’s had conversations with the Park Board and the city of Fairmont and that it sounds like city crews will be able to help with the tear down each fall and setting them up in the spring moving forward.