New training facility set to open in support of Cleveland baseball and softball
BROOKLYN – With frustrations growing around a lack of outdoor and indoor practice options, the Cleveland High School baseball and softball community hopes they’ve found a stopgap solution with the opening of an indoor training facility located across the street from Powell Park in the SE PDX Training Barn.
The 3,000 square-feet space, located at 3427 Southeast 22nd Avenue, is being supported by Cleveland Baseball and Softball Inc., a not-for-profit group that supports the two Warriors programs.
The space will have three turfed workout lanes to allow for hitting and pitching practice, as well as room for fielding practice. All the equipment from pitching machines to tees to screens and much more will also be available and for all ages.
“This is definitely going to be much, much better just because we can fully practice and work as hard as we want to without any issues that come with rain,” Cleveland senior softball player Kailen Steffek said. “No mud, no torn up grass to destroy our field. It’s going to make it so much easier through the winter and the spring.”
The Cleveland baseball program’s shed at Powell Park has been broken into/attempted to be broken into five times in head coach Brad Blocker’s two years at the helm.
The Warriors hitting barn has also been broken into and had fires started inside, and last month the net was cleanly cut off and made the 60-foot net useless.
And that’s just the baseball team. The softball team continues to have to use Woodstock Park for practice and games, a three-mile drive over from the Cleveland campus and is a field that’s often rained out.
“It’s hard to be any sort of spring team in Oregon just because being outside is so difficult, but especially for us because we’re on the dirt all the time,” Steffek said. “It really hinders our ability to do any sort of practice.”
“Thousands of dollars have gone missing,” Blocker added. “Even if you lock it up – it’s very frustrating. It seems like we’re fundraising just to keep up rather than getting new stuff. It’s a bigger part of my job than I want it to be, I want to focus more on baseball.”
Cleveland Baseball and Softball Inc. are looking for more donations after signing a three-year lease for the space.
Anyone interested in donating to the program can find them on Paypal or Venmo by visiting the SE PDX Training Barn Instagram page, or a check can be written to the organization as well.
In the city, programs have struggled across the board for practice time with limited spaces and indoor facilities on the outskirts of town or even in the suburbs.
With the opening of the Training Barn, the Warriors feel they’ll be closer to an even playing field with many of their Oregon diamond sport competitors.
“I think this is just going to make such a good change for our programs,” Steffek said. “I think it’s just refreshing. I think sometimes the idea of going to practice out in the rain at a bad field that isn’t even ours, I think it turns people away from softball sometimes. So having these facilities just makes it that much better. I think in the future we’ll be able to draw some more people in and it’s going to benefit every team we have.”
Back in May, voters did pass a $1.83 billion bond to help fund modernizations of Cleveland, Jefferson and Ida B. Wells high schools.
Part of the renovations for Cleveland include the turf football field a little further east down Powell Boulevard, where a hitting facility could be in the works, but the renovation itself is still quite a few years down the road.
Also, the community has been pushing for turf to be installed at Powell Park, a discussion that includes both PPS and the City of Portland.
Turf could be expected at the field by spring of 2028, but that doesn’t fix the issues of today that the Cleveland baseball and softball teams face.
“We get some great ball players … This freshmen class, I could see there’s college potential there already,” Blocker said. “It’s nice to be able to have something like this where we can actually further develop that than what we’re limited to. That’s the whole idea, we want to grow the program here as much as we can."
Another part of the plan is to rent the space out to any other local high school teams, little league teams, colleges, men’s leagues, etc. Anyone in the SE area who wants to get some swings in can reserve some time and help make the Barn a new fixture in the community.
The final touches are being put together on the space with an anticipated open date sometime in mid-to-late October to coincide with the MLB playoffs going on.
And once open, the Warriors hope this can be a strong next step for the baseball and softball programs that have already exceeded expectations on their muddy and soggy fields.
“I just think it’s a good look for the high school too to have good facilities like this,” Steffek said. “They’ll be able to represent Cleveland maybe a little bit more proudly knowing we have this and have the ability to train as hard as we want.”
