KEARNS — When the Kearns baseball team takes the field for today's game against Highland, it will be in its new state-of-the-art baseball stadium. Kearns High School Gates' Field will host one of what is sure to be hundreds, if not thousands, of baseball games.
The project began three years ago as a modest brainchild of several parents and alumni to create a better playing field. After a couple of months of work and a short inspection of how the improvements were taking place, Kevin Gates — a graduate of Kearns in 1976 — said to those involved, "Why don't we do this right." Gates then donated his time and money to see that the project was first-class.
He hired an architect and brought in his own general contractor to design and build the stadium. The finished project—the stadium is still not 100 percent finished while it waits for its electronic scoreboard and some small finishing touches, but Clark estimates it is 90-98 percent done—is a $1.7 million stadium that many are calling, "A miniature Franklin Covey Field."
"It has about 650 stadium seats, but with the grass hills around the outside it could seat another 800 people or so," said Kearns coach and grounds caretaker Kenyon Clark. "With the fence around and the cement work, it looks just like a pro stadium."
The stadium comes complete with batting facilities, stadium seats and even a section labeled for the media.
Today's contest is not the official grand opening. The school and team plan to have an alumni game sometime in May against Taylorsville that they will celebrate as the official opening of the stadium, complete with all the tours and events that go along with something of this magnitude.
"With something as nice as this, we want to try to make it an annual event to have an alumni game to celebrate all those that have come and gone from here," said Clark. "We plan to try to play Taylorsville every year and show everyone what Kearns is all about."