August 7, 2018 – West Bend, WI – The business end of five shovels were painted in gold and with a brief introduction representatives from the West Bend Baseball Association, City of West Bend, local business community and the West Bend School District tossed a bit of dirt Tuesday night at Regner Park to ceremoniously begin the start of the renovation of Carl M. Kuss Field.
“If you’re left handed make sure you have the left-handed shovels,” said Willie Mueller, president of the WBBA.
“This has been six and a half years in the making,” said Craig Larsen with the WBBA. “It’s quite a milestone to be where we’re at today… and we’re excited for this groundbreaking.”
With that shovel spades dug into the soft dirt and with a brief fling the project got underway.
Prudence Pick Hway, a longtime supporter of the WBBA, said it was a “bittersweet moment.”
Hway’s family has ties to baseball and Carl M. Kuss Field that go back to when the grandstand was first located at the Washington County Fairgrounds.
“My grandfather Carl Pick was a big supporter of baseball and he paid to have the grandstand moved, disassembled and reassembled from the Fairgrounds to where it is today at Regner Park,” Hway said.
“This is a tremendous project. Baseball in this community has a rich history, it has all the fun of the boys of summer and it’s very important to many, many contingents in the public.”
Larsen said the new facility “would have better seating, be ADA equipped, and have a high-end press box.”
The synthetic turf baseball field is financed via a grant from the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation. The project is expected to be finished before the start of the 2019 WIAA spring baseball season.
