By Catelyn DiLeva
Staff Writer
MBX Foundation, an organization that provides financial support for physical education and athletic programs in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District, donated $2 million to Mira Costa in order to fund the construction of a multi-sport artificial turf field in the Meadows section of Costa.
The new field will be turf instead of regular grass and will be equipped for soccer, lacrosse, and other sports teams to practice on. The current field was insufficient for the sports teams to use because of the poor quality and upkeep of the grass as well as the limited amount of space. The new field is going to be on the Meadows side of campus but instead of multiple small fields and a parking lot in the Meadows wing of campus, there will be one large field similar to the one on Peck.
One of the goals of MBX is to provide funds for needed facilities upgrades at MBUSD sites, especially those that have no other sources of revenue. During the design phase of the Meadows field project, representatives of MBUSD, MCHS administration, the community, MBX and various booster organizations met to discuss needs and priorities for the field, which included The finish plans for this project are a result of the meetings.
“We believe that this will greatly improve the physical appearance of the Meadows part of campus,” Executive Director of MBX Foundation Jennifer Williams said. “This will provide a much needed and safer athletic surface for many of Costa’s sports.”
MBX decided to fund this project because it thought it was time for the northeast field to be refurbished because of the poor conditions it was in, according to Williams. The first Measure BB construction also determined when the field would be refurbished.
“We wanted to help Costa in a way that it would benefit a majority of their extracurricular activities, like sports and marching band,” Williams said. “We think that the students will enjoy the new field and perform better with the new and extra space.”
MBX offered three and a half years ago to donate money for the new fields and the project is now beginning this year due to the Measure BB project. According to Dale, Costa waited to redo the Meadows fields because they wanted to prevent confusion between Measure BB and this construction project.
“We did not want people to get confused and for too many things to be going on at campus at once.” Dale said.
Meetings consisting of community members, MBX, MBUSD and MCHS administration and representatives from the booster organizations for the sports that will ultimately benefit from construction of the field made decisions regarding the design and funding for the field saying when and how the field should be constructed.
“The Meadows field is in very bad shape so refurbishing it will help the athletics,” Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale said. “It will be very exciting to see the new field and the athletics using it.”
MBX hopes that the new field will be beneficial for all students at Costa and help them pursue their athletics and marching band practice or Physical Education class better. The construction for the new field will begin just after graduation, according to Williams.
“We have been waiting on this project to come to life for about 3 years,” Dale said. “It is definitely worth the wait and will impact Costa greatly.”
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