After years of fundraising, the effort to install artificial turf at Philomath High School’s baseball and softball fields is closing in on its goal with organizers now roughly $70,000 to $80,000 short of what’s needed to move forward.
“We are actually really, really close to getting everything that we need,” Levi Webber, the veteran Warriors baseball coach who has led the fundraising effort since its launch, said last week. “It’s getting us to the precipice of being able to actually see the end in sight.”
The project has been years in the making. Webber first brought the idea to the Philomath School Board in February 2023, earning the board’s blessing to begin raising money for a comprehensive upgrade to both fields.
The original estimated price tag came in near $600,000. That number has since been trimmed to approximately $506,000 after organizers scaled back portions of the plan, including removing plans for new fencing around most of the baseball field and, more recently, taking a new softball scoreboard off the table after the existing one was repaired.
“As far as the functionality of the field-type things, like the turf and the dugout and the bullpen, those are all still a go,” Webber said. “The things we’ve taken out of the project are the fencing on the baseball field and the outfield, and then the scoreboard — kind of just secondary superficial things where we’re still keeping all the primary objectives for playability.”
By the summer of 2024, the project had run into headwinds, with organizers having raised only about one-third to halfway to the goal and grant funding largely proving elusive. At the time, Webber said the school district’s demographics and the fact that the fields sit on school property rather than a public park disqualified the project from many grant programs.
Since then, however, the fundraising picture has changed considerably. Webber said the Philomath Baseball Association raised somewhere in the range of $60,000 to $70,000 this past spring alone, fueled by a pair of grants that came through and several individual donations in the $10,000 range.
“The spring was good,” he said. “It really kind of pushed everything to where we needed to be.”
In-kind donations have also played a significant role in reducing costs. A local quarry has been identified as a potential source of rock material, and multiple companies have committed to handling the trucking and transportation of materials — a significant line item — at no charge. Webber said he’s now in conversations with local excavation companies about donating their services for digging out the field and preparing the base, which would further reduce the overall cost of the project
“If we can get some people to help out with that and cut that cost down even more … that will put us in an even better spot,” he said.
Ryan Starwalt, a local contractor who founded Northwest Sports Turf Solutions, has been part of the project from the beginning and is supplying the turf at a discounted rate. Webber said the turf cost, the biggest single expense in the project, has not increased significantly.
“The big ticket price is just the turf itself, which has gone up slightly over the years,” Webber said. “Ryan’s given us a pretty great deal on it, so that piece hasn’t gone up much.”
Community connections within the Philomath Baseball Association have been central to generating donations and in-kind support.
“It helps when you have the community, not just the community we have, but the community members involved in making this project happen,” Webber said. “We’ve got a lot of guys who have been around the area — many of them for decades and have their own businesses or they have great contacts and so that definitely helps.”
As for a timeline, Webber said he is hoping to be able to break ground on at least part of the project this fall, with an eye toward having the fields playable by next spring. However, he noted that he needs to consult with school officials before any dates can be confirmed.
“I don’t know how realistic that is for everything but we may try to even get our bullpens done this year,” Webber said.
The bullpen relocation is among the more visible changes planned for Stephenson Field. The current bullpens, which sit at the ends of the dugouts, would be moved into foul territory past first and third base. A new fence line would separate the bullpens from the field of play. In their place, dirt excavated from the infield during the turf installation would be used to build tiered spectator berms — roughly 65 to 70 feet long — where fans could set up lawn chairs at ground, mid and upper levels.
Webber said the benefits of artificial turf go beyond the high school programs themselves. During Oregon’s wet spring weather, the current grass fields frequently limit practice time in March and early April.
“If we have a turf field, that’s eight weeks worth of ground balls and we can get out on the field and do some other things outside of just hitting in the cages,” Webber said.
He also suggested the turf fields could draw use from PE classes and other programs during winter months when outdoor activity on grass is impractical.
Those wishing to contribute to the project can donate in several ways — mail a check to Philomath Baseball Association, P.O. Box 515, Philomath, OR 97370; donate in person at Les and Bob’s, 1204 Main St., Philomath; or donate online at or-philomath-lite.intouchreceipting.com/PHSTurf.
