The new Roderick Elementary School will be a big gain for Wrentham students. But it comes with a cost for youth sports families.

Construction of the new school will eliminate three of the six fields at the Sweatt Recreation Complex off Randall Road — the longtime home of Wrentham’s youth baseball and softball programs. Two fields will be gone permanently. A third will be unavailable for an estimated three to five years.

To replace what will be lost, the town is planning what it calls the Rice Complex Build-Out — a significant expansion of the William A. Rice Recreation Complex off Emerald Street. The project cleared an important hurdle last fall. At the November 2025 Town Meeting, residents voted unanimously to approve $250,000 for professional engineering services to design, permit, and prepare the project for construction bidding. In December 2025, the engineering contract was awarded to Clough, Harbour & Associates.

What’s at Stake at Sweatt

For families with kids in youth baseball and softball, the Sweatt complex is more than a collection of fields. Mark Kerner, president of the Wrentham Youth Baseball & Softball Association (WYBSA), described what makes it work.

With six fields clustered together with no roads in between, families with multiple children in different games don’t have to split up or race across town. The snack shack, batting cages, and school playground are all within sight of the fields.

This spring, WYBSA has 39 teams with roughly 400 boys and girls playing T-ball through eighth-grade softball. Those teams will play about 250 home games over two months. Summer baseball and softball home games are also held at Sweatt.

Losing half the complex, Kerner said, would change the experience fundamentally. His goal is to rebuild that same community feel at Rice.

Why Rice?

The William A. Rice Recreation Complex sits on about 80 acres of town-owned land bordered by Emerald Street, Dedham Street, North Street, and Shears Street. The town acquired the property from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1997. It is restricted by covenant to recreational and open space use only.

The complex has grown steadily over more than two decades. It now includes baseball fields — among them the Horne Field (Babe Ruth) and two 50/70 diamonds — three Jackson Basketball Courts, a sand volleyball court, bocce courts, a concession stand, and the Jane D’Amico Playground, which opened in 2020. The playground was named for a 20-year Recreation Commission member and funded largely through Wrentham’s Community Preservation Act funds.

The Plan

The proposed minimum project, as described by Recreation Director Jeff Plympton and Recreation Commission Chair Ray Palmer, includes two baseball/softball fields and three open space fields. The two baseball/softball fields would replace an existing open space field near the complex entrance. The three new open space fields would be added in the area behind the D’Amico Playground.

The design also incorporates future expansion of the Metacomet Greenway, the regional trail that runs through Wrentham.

To stay within available budget, Plympton and Palmer said several elements are being deferred to future funding: lighting, septic, new parking, and a new entrance from Dedham Street (Route 1A). The project will be funded through the town’s operating budget — not a debt exclusion. Town Administrator Mike King is working with Recreation to match the final construction scope to available funds once the engineer’s cost estimate is complete. The project will then be brought to the June Town Meeting for approval.

What’s Really at Risk

To understand why Plympton and Palmer are pressing hard for this project, it helps to understand how Wrentham Recreation pays its bills.

The department does not rely primarily on town tax dollars. According to Plympton and Palmer, outside programs and tournaments hosted at the Sweatt Fields fund roughly 85 percent of the approximately $400,000 annual cost to operate and maintain the Rice Complex, Sweatt Fields, and Sweatt Beach. The town covers only about 15 percent. Three major softball tournaments alone — drawing around 150 teams — generate approximately $50,000 per year. The Recreation flag football program brings in approximately $40,000 more. 

Those programs depend on having adequate fields. Without them, Plympton and Palmer said, the tournaments and outside programs will move to other communities’ facilities. And once they leave, they are unlikely to come back.

That’s the scenario that concerns Recreation officials most. If the revenue disappears, the town would be left responsible for the full $400,000 in annual maintenance costs — with no identified funding source to cover them. Plympton and Palmer said that without a solution, Recreation programs and the various recreation facilities would be at risk.

Not New — Replacement

Plympton was clear about how Recreation views the build-out: it is not an expansion of services. It is a replacement of what the new school will take away.

The purpose, as he described it, is to preserve the programs that Wrentham children already participate in — baseball, softball, flag football — and to protect the revenue sources that make those programs possible.

The engineering work is now underway. Once a construction cost estimate is available, the town will determine the final scope and present it at the June Town Meeting for a vote.

For information on Wrentham Recreation programs, visit wrenthamma.myrec.com.