By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — The International Women’s Baseball Center is preparing to make a series of improvements to the historic field where the Rockford Peaches once played in hopes of attracting major women’s baseball games to the city in the future.
A handful of improvements to the grounds and amenities are meant to help the nonprofit organization build momentum after hosting the USA Baseball Women’s National Team last August at Beyer Stadium, 245 15th Ave. in south Rockford.
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The success of last summer’s event has drawn interest for future USA Women’s National Team exhibitions as well as the World Baseball Softball Confederation, Major League Baseball and Women’s Baseball World Cup, said Kat Williams, CEO of the International Women’s Baseball Center.
“USA baseball was blown away. They’re like, that is the most people we’ve played in front of ever. Rockford really came out,” Williams said. “If you bring a World Cup to Rockford, the home of women’s baseball, and that’s pretty darn cool.”
The improvements include bleachers, fence padding, batting and pitching warmup areas, bathrooms, a scoreboard and regrading the outfield.
“In order for us to have international-level competition, that outfield has to be in darn good shape,” Williams said.
The improvements are supported by $400,000 the city awarded to the IWBC in March from its federal American Rescue Plan relief funds.
The first part of the part of the work is expected to be the construction of bathrooms later this summer, Williams said. Future phases, depending on additional fundraising, would include installing lighting at the field.
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Center and museum next steps
The improvements are the latest step for the IWBC in its goal to build a women’s baseball center and museum near the historic field.
That project would give the International Women’s Baseball Center a physical location with an activities and community building and a museum that honors the pioneers and future stars of women’s baseball.
“This is something that is unique and has the potential to be pretty groundbreaking for women’s sports, and it’s only going to happen in Rockford, Illinois,” Williams said.
Last year, the IWBC made a splash in announcing it landed Belvidere native Jeanne Gang, a world-renowned architect, to design the future center.
Since then, Williams said work toward creating the center and museum has progressed behind the scenes.
IWBC has brought in The Swinton Group of Chicago to coordinate its fundraising efforts. Fundraising is in a private phase now but a public capital campaign will launch soon, Williams said. It also hired Zubatkin Owner Representation of New York as its project manager. Meanwhile, Studio Gang is working on final designs.
“It may seem like stuff is not happening, and it’s not always the sexy stuff,” Williams said. “But it’s exciting to us because it means that this freakin’ is real.”
The IWBC also plans to have Solid Light Inc. of Louisville design the future museum exhibits.
“We’ve created in some ways this all-star team,” Williams said. “We’ve put together this great team, now it’s a matter of we have to raise the money to keep it going.”
Williams said the next public phase will be to reveal Studio Gang’s designs, although there is no timeline for that yet.
In the meantime the IWBC keeps itself involved in sponsoring tournaments and promoting women’s athletic events.
“For us, it’s never just been about building the building,” Williams said. “There’s so many wonderful and exciting things going on in women’s baseball. For us, it’s about supporting all that’s already going on and trying to guide that through Rockford.”
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas