Time to open wallets and fix the facilities.

The floor of Mansfield High's gymnasium is 53 years old and needs to be replaced.

Tonight in my hometown, there's a town meeting that will decide a lot of financial expenditures, not the least of which are approximately $5.4 million for upgrades to the high school football stadium, and another $1 million for replacement of the gymnasium floor.

That's a lot of money. Hey, I remember that in 1971, the Patriots' home stadium in nearby Foxboro (called Schaefer Stadium after the beer) cost $6.8 million to build. It seated 62,000 people. Mansfield's Alumni Field seats maybe 2,000. Of course, translated from 1971 dollars, Schaefer Stadium would have cost about $51.7 million to build today, and it would still pale before the initial investment of $350 million to build Gillette Stadium as well as the $300 million Robert Kraft has since shelled out for improvements to the 2002-vintage successor.

Also costing a lot of money is the replacement to the gym floor. I actually was one of the first MHS students to set foot on it on a game night after it opened in January 1970, as it was my duty to set up the scorer's table for the night's basketball action. That's still the same floor. It has survived 53 years of basketball, wrestling, volleyball, gym classes, floods, auxiliary baskets falling from the wall to it, countless resurfacing and the replacement of bleachers, and it is now paper-thin. Indeed, the paint for the lines and the varnish are thicker than the wood, and it can no longer be sanded down any further.

There was a time when that wouldn't have mattered much. We were pretty pathetic in basketball for many years. But over the last three decades or so, the fortunes of the Mansfield boys' and girls' basketball teams have improved significantly. Both teams are regular state tournament participants and the boys have been to state championship games three times since 2013, winning the coveted Division 1 title in 2018.

I do have to say, and I mentioned this in a letter to the superintendent of schools recently, this town can be proud of how Mansfield High has been maintained. The James Albertini Memorial Gymnasium (named for Mansfield's only Vietnam casualty) is still a showcase at age 53, and looks newer and fresher than many gyms built much more recently. And I'd know, because I've been visiting gyms all over this state since 1969 as a sportswriter, and now as a play-by-play announcer. 

I think it's fair to reward the kids of future teams for their hard work to give them a floor that's not going to disintegrate under their feet.

Mansfield's Alumni Field needs a facelift.

The Alumni Field renovations did raise my eyebrows over the price tag, but there's a reason. First, the artificial turf has reached the end of its lifespan after a little more than a decade. A new field will be safer, employing newer technologies that weren't available when it was first set down. The running track also needs to be replaced in its entirety, which means that it will be torn up to the gravel base and new asphalt and a running surface will be applied.

A new scoreboard is also in the works (which feels like déjà vu to me after North Attleboro's battle over an expensive new one), new LED lighting will be installed, and bleachers will be extended the length of the field (instead of just east of the 50-yard line) on the home side. It's a long story why the stands on opposite sides of the field face empty space on the other side, and I won't bore you with it.

Again, Mansfield has one of the consistently most successful football programs in the commonwealth. I can understand turning Alumni Field -- which was only going to be a practice field when first opened in 2001 -- into a better home for all Hornet teams that play there.

They aren't addressing one glaring drawback of the field, though, and that's the press box.

There is one there, but it was built as an afterthought and funded by the local cable access company for its purposes and little else. It's grown old, it's too small to allow any media other than the local cable crew, and its wooden structure is starting to rot.

As I told the superintendent, "When I worked for The Sun Chronicle (1977-2018), I was told right from the beginning by then-athletic director Margaret Conaty that the “press box” was not for use by the actual press – that it was basically the sole domain of Mansfield Cable Access and not under her control. Print media that may have needed to shield themselves from the elements could enter only if they remained in the back of the box, with hardly any access to the windows to have an adequate view of the field. And because there was no room inside the box for additional announcers or cameras – as well as a first-dibs situation in the viewing area on the roof for the Mansfield coaching staff (and maybe visiting coaches, although their access was limited) -- visiting cable access crews were basically denied the opportunity to televise games from there unless they could set up in the stands, surrounded by fans.

"I’ve been on both sides of the issue," I continued, "and I can say without hesitation that Mansfield has been the among the least accommodating schools to visiting print and electronic media – and it pains me to say that, because I understand that people at MHS have wanted to be more helpful but are restricted by the facilities."

Yes, the media has changed a lot in the years since my tenure at the local daily. Smaller papers rarely staff games, but the larger papers still send reporters when the games warrant the attention. But now, cable television has become more interested in offering coverage. Some systems will send crews home and away, and that's what we occasionally do when I work for Mansfield Cable Access in the winter doing the basketball calls. But most of my work in the fall is for North Attleborough Community Television (North TV), calling the games from King Philip Regional High in Wrentham. And we sometimes get ambitious enough to follow KP on the road.

In 2019, I almost was able to negotiate a situation where North TV might be able to put a single camera on the roof of the Mansfield press box for a playoff game between KP and Mansfield, and our two announcers could operate out of the stands if we could get electricity to our mixing board. But that fell apart because with all of the coaches up there, there would not be enough room for one lone cameraman.

In recent years, Attleboro, North Attleboro and Foxboro have renovated their fields or built new ones, and the plans included spacious press boxes that could accommodate all of the official local personnel (timekeepers, announcers, coaching staffs) as well as a healthy attendance of print and electronic media. Mansfield should investigate those structures and see if something similar might be worth considering for the future of Alumni Field.

I know that a stand-alone appropriation of a cool million or so for a press box might raise the ire of the more frugal souls that go to town meetings to complain about every penny spent by the town. I also imagine that the right-wing-leaning element in town (we do have a few) would become apoplectic over the notion that the "fake news" media should get any consideration at all. Had the press box been included in the initial renovation cost, however, I doubt it would have raised little more than a few peeps in protest.

As it is, I'm really wondering how things will go at tonight's meeting. Some might balk at the field renovations and replacement, claiming that athletes should play on the grass that God made for them. The critics will have to be reminded that the upkeep of that grass costs a lot more over a 10-12 year span than a properly-maintained artificial surface, which can take a lot more punishment. But they probably won't be swayed. It will take a lot of old Hornets like me to carry the day, I suspect.

And indeed, once a Hornet, always a Hornet. Even if it makes my tax bill go up.