Ernest Ledford Grindle Athletics Park reached completion with the start of 2017 and opened on a sunny February afternoon. The park was dedicated in mid-April, after the Golden Tigers softball team spent the first weeks of its season setting records and exceeding expectations. It’s a whole new ballgame at Brenau.

Brenau University junior Mackenzie Oliver Mullis has scored plenty of runs in her softball career, but she had even more reason to celebrate crossing home plate on an unseasonably warm, sunny February day.

Mullis scored the first run on the new softball field at Ernest Ledford Grindle Athletics Park, which gives the Golden Tigers a legitimate home field advantage. They previously played on parks and recreation fields in the Gainesville area.

“It’s a whole different story knowing it’s our dirt and our field,” said Mullis, who is a senior health sciences major from Carnesville, Georgia. “We’re not sharing it with anybody. It feels like ours.”

The park is named for a former resident of the New Holland community, about a mile from the historic Gainesville campus. The initial phase of the 16.75-acre project cost about $2 million and included the site development, a softball field and bleachers, parking and a field house. Although the dedication was April 18, there was fanfare aplenty on opening day, Feb. 7, with Brenau President Ed Schrader throwing out the first pitch before about 150 fans that in retrospect heralded a season for the ages.

The Golden Tigers swept the Southern States Athletic Conference, winning 30 consecutive conference games, including four tournament games, April 27-29 in Decatur, Alabama. The end of the SSAC tournament finds the Golden Tigers with their 51st win of the 2017 season with only five losses. No other SSAC team has ever won all of its conference games in regular-season and postseason play. Additionally, The Golden Tigers garnered the SSAC Coach of the Year, Freshman of the Year, Pitcher of the Year, Player of the Year and numerous all-conference and all freshman honors. Brenau continues its quest for the national title in the NAIA Softball Championship opening round May 15-17.

In Game 1 of Brenau’s home-opening doubleheader, freshman pitcher Eli Daniel posted the first no-hitter at Pacolet Milliken Field. Few could have guessed this would be the beginning of an absolutely dominating season for the biology major from Locust Grove, Georgia. Daniel’s 15-strikeout performance in the final game of the SSAC tournament gave her 539 this season and put her within one of tying the NAIA’s all-time single-season record of 540 set by Oklahoma City University’s Lily LaVelle in 2012. Daniel is the national leader in strikeouts, ERA (0.52), wins (42), opponents’ batting average (.128) and innings pitched (309 1/3). Daniel was voted the league’s freshman, pitcher and player of the year and SSAC tournament MVP.

“It feels amazing to be able to play on a brand new field,” Daniel said of the inaugural season at Grindle Park. “The new field has brought a whole new energy to the team, because we have something to call our own.”

Lexi Cash doubled in Mullis in the first inning of Game 1 for the first hit at the park named after the South Carolina-based company that donated the 16.8-acre tract of land next to its textile mill. Cash recognized the Golden Tigers players who came before her and never had a field to call their own. “They just paved the way for this to happen,” the pre-nursing major from Toccoa, Georgia, said. “It means a lot to me to be part of the first team to be out here.”

Junior biology major Mason Garland agrees that being part of the first team to play at the park is special. “Playing in the brand new park is a once in a lifetime experience,” she said. “It is exciting to know that we are the first of many Brenau softball teams to play on the field and we are off to a great start. The atmosphere here is like no other. Though I miss seeing the adorable rec ball players at Lanier Pointe Park where we use to play, now we see our peers and professors cheering us on. We always have a great turn out.”

Just the Beginning

The athletics park is a home run for Brenau and the completion of Phase II will help round out the university’s $40 million ForeverGold: An Extraordinary Legacy campaign. As the additional $4 million in needed funds are secured, the second phase will address Brenau’s soccer and other field sports through the creation of a traditional field surrounded by a track adjacent to the softball venue.

The Melvin Douglas and Victoria Kay Ivester Foundation provided funding in 2014 to complete development of the first phase of the park, which is named for Kay Ivester’s father. Douglas Ivester, the former Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO, is a Brenau trustee. The Ivesters grew up in New Holland.

With Brenau’s enrollment approximately 830 at the Women’s College, almost one-fourth are involved in intercollegiate athletics. With the recent addition of the new Golden Tigers lacrosse team and the budding competitive shooting program, both slated to roll out in the 2017-18 season, the Women’s College will compete in 12 sports with 16 teams.

Both the $10 million worth of new dormitories and sorority houses and the $6 million earmarked for the park are components of the ForeverGold capital campaign. “So it’s a ‘put your money where your mouth is,’” Schrader said. “We’ve said for a while that we’re going to keep our Women’s College going. Well, this is a demonstration that we are serious about those efforts.”

David Barnett, Brenau CFO and executive vice president, said the facility, which continues to expand the school’s footprint around the Gainesville area, “makes it feel more like a traditional environment and less like a commuter kind of school. It gives life and energy to the community that isn’t present when you don’t have your own facility to use.”

This helps toward student retention, he added, as retention is “exponentially higher among students who are actively engaged in some way over and above just taking their courses. Grindle Park provides them with a place to connect socially as well as academically.”

A Community Staple Reborn

The Golden Tigers softball team began reaping benefits even before the first pitch. Coach Devon Thomas said he has completed his recruiting class for 2017. “All five that I brought in, they came to the field and they committed that night,” he said. “I’ve also got two for 2018 already. I used to have to wait, and now they see the locker room, the field house, the facility, the scoreboard and it helps recruiting 100 percent.”

Thomas’ roots are in the New Holland community, too. Both of his paternal grandparents worked at the mill. His grandfather pitched on a fast-pitch team that played on the old ball fields in the mill that was at about the same spot in the park as the new field. Thomas even played on the fields growing up.

“I had goosebumps when I came out here,” he said, “just knowing who all played here. Johnny Mize is one of the former major league baseball players who played right here, and now we’ve brought the field back to life and continued the game of softball on it.”

When he became coach in 2004, Brenau finished 2-40 in his first year. The Golden Tigers reached the national tournament in 2009, 2012 and 2016, won a conference championship and reached the final four in 2012, losing a spot in the title game by one 7th inning run.

“We’ve been in the top 25 for the past six years all the way as high as No. 2 in the country and receiving first-place votes. So it’s well overdue. It feels like it’s my baby since I started it back in 2004, so it feels good.”

The park’s location off Jesse Jewell Parkway should also raise Brenau’s profile in the community. “With thousands of cars a day going down that road, we’ll make some new fans, I hope,” Thomas said.

Schrader said it will also attract students. “It’s as good an advertisement as you can get for a drive-by family that either has any sideways interest in their daughter going to Brenau Women’s College, or going home after work and here’s a Brenau ad on TV about continuing education and they want to finish a college degree that they started years ago,” he said. “They see the facilities right there and it’s just a positive imprint on their memory of the school.”

Benefits Beyond Brenau

In addition to being used for intercollegiate athletics, Schrader said the field can be used as a community service enhancement facility. He hopes to partner with a nearby assisted living facility and provide a greenway for walking and even movies on the green.

Brenau plans to hold high school and middle school clinics and tournaments on the field when it’s not in the middle of the competitive season.

The new park has regenerated the area, said Vic Wilson, BU ’77, a New Holland historian and former resident of the close-knit mill community. “It’s invigorating,” he said. “That’s where our playgrounds were for the school and they had a semipro baseball league and the industrial leagues. It’s where life happened down there. For it to be totally neglected for decades, and then for Brenau and the Ivesters to do what they have done, it’s come to life again.”

Matt Thomas, Brenau vice president for external relations, said that one reason people were generous toward this project was “because it’s in the New Holland area and this location had been used for rec sports for numerous generations. This has enabled people that are from Gainesville and from New Holland to see it transform into something that they can be excited about and proud of, and we certainly hope that it will be a community asset in addition to being good for Brenau.”

As Brenau Athletic Director Mike Lochstampfor surveyed the new field on opening day, he looked beyond it to the scrub land still waiting to be reclaimed.

“It all looked like that field over there,” he said. “Who would have thought you could have something this beautiful come out of it, this perfect? It rises to a Division I-caliber facility.”

And it’s all Brenau’s.

Additional reporting by Benjamin McDade.