Poway Girls Softball League players closed their season Saturday by celebrating the 20th anniversary of their favorite venue, Aubrey Park.
The park, directly across from Old Poway Park on Aubrey Street. is near and dear to their hearts. Its four girls softball fields have hosted many games, practices and tournaments over two decades.
Along with the fields, the 8-acre park has a snack bar, meeting space, equipment storage and restrooms. The park also has a playground, a walking track around the park, and a batting cage where softball players can practice hitting against pitching machines, said one of the park’s founders, Roger Moyers.
“When people come to that park from other girls leagues and see those fields they’re very jealous,” Moyers said. “The league built the snack shack there so when we’re having games people can get food. We have our meeting room and store softball and field equipment there.”
But before the park started serving children and their families, dog walkers, athletes and the wider community, the property was considered an eyesore or at the very least an overlooked space.
Moyers, whose daughter, Tracy Strycharsky, now 37, had played for the softball league, recalls that homeless people used to use it as shelter and a former Christmas tree farm abandoned large pine trees on the site.
“It was a pretty rundown property that wasn’t being maintained,” said the former Poway resident, who now lives in Point Loma. “The other problem was that it was in the floodplain of Rattlesnake Creek.”
That was in the early 2000s, when Poway Girls Softball League players were being displaced from their fields at the original Midland Elementary School on Midland Road. The school was on track to be torn down and completely rebuilt, so league officials went looking for alternatives to the playing fields on school grounds they had used since 1967, Moyers said.
“The school needed to be redone, which was great for the kids,” Moyers said. “We looked at properties all over Poway, and when former City Manager Jim Bowersox showed us those on Aubrey Street, they looked perfect to us. We probably spent a couple of years before we found that location.”
Several Aubrey Park founders who were league board — Moyers, Mike Snell and Gregg Brandalise – began collaborating with Bowersox and former Poway Mayor Mickey Cafagna to get the new park built.
But Brandalise said they faced pushback from a small but vocal group who lived in the neighborhood. Some of the neighbors didn’t like the idea of the softball games and practices generating noise and traffic, he said. Although the residents said they were worried about the park lowering their property values, Brandalise said it ended up increasing them.
The day the Poway City Council was scheduled to vote on whether to approve building Aubrey Park, more than 1,000 people showed up in of the project, said Brandalise, a Poway resident whose daughter, Simone Jones, now 36, played for the league.
The council, expecting one of its largest crowds ever, held the meeting at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts, he recalled.
Snell, whose youngest daughter Chase Cervantes, now 30, was a softball player, said a huge number of ers including other softball and soccer leagues showed up in of the park. The City Council ultimately unanimously approved the park, he said.
Snell said the league was given early notice about Midland Elementary’s renovation so league officials had time to raise money for the roughly $1.45 million project.
“We had saved quite a bit of money through sponsorships over the years,” he said, noting that annual Casino Nights hosted by the league raised tens of thousands of dollars each year for several years. “We had always been socking away money from sponsorship drives and asking for donations at the start of the seasons.”
Donations also helped pay for environmental, traffic and noise studies, along with fencing and security systems. Laborers also donated their services for landscaping and concrete work. The city chipped in for things like tree removals, grading, installing water fountains and restrooms, Snell said.
“The city had to buy the property plus pay for plumbing, electrical services, backstops, a decorative monument and for bringing in water fountains and pathways at the park,” he said.
Brad Kutzner, a former Poway assistant city engineer, said staff worked with the founders as the city reviewed and oversaw the design and construction of the park project.
“Gregg, Roger and Mike spearheaded it and the softball organization came forward and asked the city to help with it,” Kutzner recalled. “They were instrumental in carrying out their concept, which they brought to the City Council. The property wasn’t being used for productive activities and some of that was vacant land. It’s now in a more functional condition than it ever was before. It’s a very busy facility. It’s always being used by somebody.”
Poway Girls Softball League maintains Aubrey Park’s softball fields and the city maintains the surrounding park, which is open to the public, he said. Planners at the outset incorporated backstops and decorative features that are consistent with the Old Poway Park theme, and care was taken to blend both parks with the nearby Veterans Park, he said.
“My granddaughters are using the park now,” Kutzner said, adding that the area is a popular place during Saturday morning farmers markets on Midland Road. “It’s fun to be a part of something like that that the public can take advantage of.”
Moyers said Aubrey Park’s fields are also heavily used during the main rec season from early March to early May when 40 teams in the league practice and play there.
When the next Summer Heat Classic All-Star Softball Tournament is held at Aubrey Park from June 19 to 22, about 70 softball teams from throughout Southern California are expected to show up and play, he said.
Additionally, the Poway Padres team, a softball team of special athletes, uses the fields on Sunday afternoons during the winter season.
“It’s gorgeous and it worked out better than we thought,” Snell said. “We invested a lot in that park and a lot of people have taken good care of it. Later generations don’t know how much work was involved, but we’re really happy that they appreciate it so much.”
