After 20 years, Burlingame softball batting cages funded

So she showed up to a City Council meeting with a $10,000 check, raised by community members and the girls’ softball players themselves, ready to put a deposit down on a softball cage.

“I really appreciated the young girls, the parents, who were willing, had worked so hard to put some money down and really show they weren’t just demanding that the government solve our problem. They were really trying to step up and solve it,” Colson said.

On Jan. 16, as mayor, Colson initiated the City Council’s motion to authorize a construction agreement and $379,000 in additional funding to build a softball cage facility at Washington Park. The building will be equipped with electricity, lighting and a roof, allowing Burlingame Girls Softball to practice anytime.

“I looked up on my calendar today to find the very first time we started talking about the batting cage, and it was 2002. We sit here 22 years later, finally getting a batting cage,” she said during the council meeting, where the motion was unanimously approved. “It’s a gender equity issue, it’s a fairness issues and it’s an issue I know this council believes in.”

The batting cage will be open in the fall, Colson said, serving around 250-300 girls. The Burlingame High School softball team could potentially practice there as well.

“For us, it’s huge,” Meghan Dunne, Burlingame Girls Softball president, said. “It’s really exciting, to be able to think about having the same opportunity as the boys program in our city. It makes us feel really validated as a youth sports organization.”

Burlingame Girls Softball — which serves ages 5 to 18 — currently holds its cage batting practice at Bayside Fields. These unenclosed cages can be challenging in inclement weather, like mud or rain, and the organization has to rent light towers so the girls can see.

And although Burlingame’s softball program is quite successful, the largest recreation program per number of residents on the Peninsula, the lack of year-round practice facility has been a detriment to the organization, Dunne said.

“Part of it is having facilities you’re able to practice in year round,” she said of a softball programs’ success. “[Now], even in our off season, our players can continue to do cage work, hitting, pitching, strength and conditioning in this enclosed facility.”

Although the current Burlingame City Council, alongside the Parks and Recreation Department, has been very supportive of the project, public support wasn’t always the norm.

In 2005, when the project was gaining momentum and the cage was proposed for Ray Park, neighbors were concerned about traffic, noise and just “didn’t want it built there,” Colson said.

“It ended up being this enormous contention,” she said. “We had to bring out Parks and Rec., they were listening to 10-year-old girls hitting a bat and ball, comparing it to ambient noise, taking readings … it almost felt like a trial.”

The Ray Park location didn’t work out, and the project went through a variety of iterations and potential locations, navigating funding and even governmental officials, one who suggested adding more girl-oriented classes like dance to the community center instead.

“There was never a need for the girls facilities to be equal and accessible,” Colson said of some original attitudes.

There were bright spots in the long process, too — like former U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, whose daughter was in the softball program — coming to speak to the girls about continuing the fight for equal facilities in 2006. But despite the advocacy, the project was at times mired in fluctuation.

“We had to go through more of what I would call the bureaucracy. You can imagine, housing was taking 20 years, and so was a women’s athletic facility, just jammed up in the same process,” Colson said.

It had champions, as well, Dunne and Colson said, including current Burlingame Parks and Recreation Director Margaret Glomstad and former Burlingame Girls Softball President Jay Leslie.

“I simply want to reiterate the emails that were just read, the value to the community, and what it will mean moving forward to be on equal footing for girls and boys in our community,” Leslie said at the Jan. 16 council meeting. “Both programs, [Burlingame Youth Baseball Association] and [Burlingame Girls Softball] have been highly successful because of the efforts of, I know a lot of you, and others in our community and I want nothing more than to see you continue.”

As the project reaches its final stages, Colson reflected on the commitment she made to prioritize it as mayor this year.

“This became a real priority for me knowing I was going to be the mayor,” she said, joking that if it didn’t get done, she might have to sue the city over it.

Luckily, Colson can put the potential for a civil lawsuit aside, focusing on other goals for her time as mayor — including greater communication with Burlingame residents, with upcoming twice-monthly office hours, infrastructure projects like the grade separation at Broadway and El Camino Real improvements, and responsibly managing the city’s budget, she said.

Still, she’s cognizant of the time it took to get the softball cage approved — and its broader implications.

“What it really shows is that gender equity is so many elements, [including] sports … it really still veers toward male athletes,” she said. “And that extends into the workforce, probably into politics, and many, many things.”