BASEBALL are from the Dominican Republic, where each team has an academy, and they are here to work out.
Then, after that, it’ s another three months of Arizona Complex League rookie ball, and those are night games in May, June and July. August is extended Complex League, so another month of baseball action, then it’ s right into fall instructionals for August and September.
There will be camps mixed into that rotation for the team. They’ re working out, and they have hitting and pitching camps going on November and December. There are only a couple weeks per year where the teams are off, typically around Thanksgiving and then Christmas to New Year, and that’ s it.
Around mid-April they transition to using half the complex because the other half of the complex is utilized for youth tournaments. We have a contract for 14U through 18U tournaments; so, we have youth baseball pretty much Friday through Monday every weekend from Memorial Day through the beginning of October.
There’ s also a bit of men’ s senior baseball, state playoffs, and community use like Little League mixed in as well. So we’ re pretty jam packed from May through the beginning of November with team use, tournaments and community use.
SFM: How many fields do you have operating at any one time? Donovan: We do three games per day per field for tournaments. For some tournaments there are four games, but we try to limit it to three to save wear and tear on the fields. In the summer, when it’ s 110 degrees plus, four games per day on a field eats away at it pretty good. So that’ s 24 games per day, just on the minor side. But then all the team activities are happening at the same time; so, we’ re not just taking care of the fields for the tournament— we also have to take care of the team needs, and they use at least three fields each daily. We also host graduations for high schools, we have food truck festivals, Halloween events, and other stuff happening at the stadium.
SFM: How do you balance those schedules and coordinate everything to make sure that everything runs smoothly across such a large operation? Dobbins: Our GM has been here for quite a while, so we work really closely with him. He’ s the main driver, and then there is a stadium ops coordinator who takes the calls from the tournament users. They get the schedule put together and then they run it by us to make sure we are good with our staffing, the field usage and whether fields need time off. Our general approach has to be a patient approach, and communicating to get our GM fully involved to understand the big picture. We have a shared calendar that has been really beneficial. You can quickly jump on that calendar, see the events, and sometimes take a deeper dive into specific dates.
SFM: What are the biggest challenges that you face? Donovan: Trying to grow two types of grass throughout the year is a big challenge with almost year-round use. We have to maneuver around teams, so we overseed in stages. We start in mid-October, and then the last overseed we put down on the fields is almost late November. So there’ s a pretty big difference in temperature for us. A sweet spot has been the third week in October; but we start getting into middle of November or the end of November, and it’ s a lot colder, so it takes a lot longer to get germination going. We’ re always ready for spring, but sometimes it’ s a little tight. You just want to be set and ready. The teams have been great; they want a good complex too, so they’ re pretty flexible. sportsfieldmanagementonline. com June 2025 | SportsField Management
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