Photo: District of Sicamous

The District of Sicamous will soon begin spring cleaning on local baseball diamonds in order to have them ready for the first softball tournament of the year.

At the March 12 District of Sicamous council meeting, Darrel Symbaluk, operations manager, explained the spring maintenance plans for the ball fields to council.

He told council last year, the district invested a little more time and effort into the fields following a letter from local softball players complaining about hard ground and dangerous holes in the outfields.

In 2024, the district spent $35,732 on maintenance and rehabilitation of district-owned baseball diamonds.

Symbalkuk said spring cleanup around the district typically gets started in mid-April.

“Obviously, it's weather dependent,” he said. “We start by grooming trails, sidewalks, doing the parking lots, getting everything swept and power washed, power wash all the equipment and structures. Ball diamond grooming gets done early on, and it's usually a pretty deep cut.”

Last year, the district brought in an eight-ton roller to help level the fields, along with 300 tons of additional top dressing.

“The last thing we did last year was profiled all the diamonds really well late in the year, so that when we woke up in the spring and we've looked at them, they won't be too bad,” he added.

“We had a lot of good compliments back from that, and I think the results were pretty good.”

Symbaluk said the fields would be assessed over the next few weeks to see if additional rolling is necessary this year, otherwise they will continue with regular maintenance.

“We will be cutting weekly or more if needed, and the diamond grooming will be biweekly, so we'll be profiling and watching for that,” he said. “We've got a tournament on May 2, which is super early, so we're hoping for good weather, and we're going to have it as good as we can.”

Symbaluk told council that crews should have the fields ready for the May 2 tournament, but whether they would be open for practice before the tournament will depend on the weather.

Councillors in attendance thanked Symbaluk and his team for their hard work on the fields.

“Darrel, thank you. That looks amazing,” said Coun. Siobhan Rich. “And the fields, what a difference. …I mean, they’re really coming along.”

Coun. Gord Bushell also thanked Symbaluk for filling in the holes in the field.

“Good job filling those big holes,” he said. “There were quite a few big holes.”