Boosters Announce New Project

By DARLA M. YOUNGS
COOPERSTOWN

Cooperstown Central School’s Lambert Fields will see an upgrade to the concession stand there as early as this summer if all goes as planned—including Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant bathrooms and a large storage area—thanks to the Cooperstown Sports Booster Club.

“This project was started by a previous group of boosters,” said current club President Greg Klein in an e-mail. “When Alicia Chase and I became president and vice president, in 2022, we inherited a dedicated account with $10,000.00 in it. We were told it was supposed to be donated to the school as part of an athletic field revamp that included bathrooms.

“However, the athletic plan was taken out of that year’s budget. We had a lot of community and booster conversations, and it was clear the desire was for us to replace the [portable toilets] with real bathrooms,” Klein said.

According to Klein, Jon McManus Engineering has donated the design and is working with both school and state architects.

“The plan you see is not official, but an architectural rough sketch,” Klein explained. “The concession stand roof would be expanded to cover two ADA-compliant bathrooms and a large storage area for the boosters and sports teams to use at Lambert Field in fall and spring.”

Klein said the school board has given the Cooperstown Sports Boosters the go-ahead to treat this as a donation to the school, with the booster club paying directly for the project. Once the plans are final this month, he said they will move to the contractor phase. The total cost of the project is unclear at this time.

“[The project] is small enough we do not have to bid it out and we may end up with a lot of donated labor and/or materials. That is what happened when previous boosters built the [original] concession stand,” Klein continued. “We are preparing to go back to the Board of Education for the environmental review [under the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act] as soon as the documents are ready, either at a special meeting or at the BOE’s March meeting. I don’t think we have to go to the Town of Otsego, but we will if needed, as the project is not in village boundaries.”
Klein said the boosters hope to build this summer, but that depends on how quickly the state can review and approve the plans.

“I am told it is fingers crossed on the timing, but one day or another, we will get the project built,” he added.

In other news, the Cooperstown Sports Booster Club is currently preparing for its annual golf tournament, to be held this year on Thursday, June 27 at Otsego Golf Club. There are multiple sponsorship opportunities available, including Event Sponsor at $2,000.00, Breakfast Sponsor at $250.00, Lunch Sponsor at $500.00 and Hole Sponsors at $100.00, among others. There will be a shotgun start at 11 a.m. The cost to play is $200.00 for a team of four.

“The golf tournament has been done in the past in conjunction with the CCS Athletic Hall of Fame, which we are also holding this year, as a make-up year for the five-year gap during the pandemic. Space in the tournament is limited, so foursomes should sign up quickly,” Klein urged.

“In the future, the boosters hope to run the tournament every June and return the Hall of Fame to an every-other-year event. Nominations for the HOF closed on March 11. The HOF Committee will vote on and announce the Class of 2024 in April. The HOF induction will be during homecoming weekend, time and date to be announced,” he continued.

The booster club is also seeking members and officers for next year.

“By September, when new officers are elected, three of the four [current] officers won’t have kids in the school. Alicia will do a great job as president, but she will need a secretary, a treasurer, a vice president and a concession stand manager,” Klein explained.

According to Klein, booster club officers are not required to have children currently attending CCS.
“Many boosters are alums, coaches or parents of graduates,” he said. “I stayed on this year because there is a tradition of presidents staying on for a year or two past their kids graduating. Mine was class of 2023. It helps with continuity.”

Booster club meetings are held the third Monday of every month unless the school is on holiday. Their next meeting is at 6 p.m. on Monday, March 18 in the athletic office at the middle/high school.
“The Cooperstown Sports Booster Club runs the Dick White and Cooperstown wrestling holiday tournaments. We run the concession stands at games. We run and pay for the year-end athletic awards banquet,” Klein said. “Several of the year-end awards are from the boosters—Red Bursey, Bob Snyder, Ken Kiser, Students Choice, etc. We run the Don Howard Invitational and turned it into an all-sports Spring Fling event last year. We revived the CCS Athletic Hall of Fame, which is actually a school thing, but had been dormant since 2018.”

Klein said the boosters also pay for whatever the school does not cover, such as box lunches for long playoff game road trips, trophies and awards, extra equipment, and subsidized summer camps.
“Recently, with the help of a donor, we paid for pre-season indoor tennis practice days. We have sponsored strength and conditioning camps this spring and will conduct a two-day wrestling camp this summer,” Klein added.

The Cooperstown Sports Booster Club is a 501c3 charitable organization. Donations to the bathroom project can be mailed to Cooperstown Sports Booster Club, PO Box 141, Cooperstown, NY 13326.

For more information on the concession stand revamp or the golf tournament, e-mail ccsboosterclub@gmail.com.