By Kathianne Boniello
The students and staff at Benjamin Cardozo High School in Bayside would have liked to dedicate their brand new athletic fields, track and tennis courts outside Friday morning, but steady rains forced the school to change its plans.
Instead, hundreds of boisterous students packed the Cardozo gym as Principal Rick Hallman and a number of dignitaries cut a ceremonial ribbon in front of a table holding a strip of turf cut from the new $3 million field, which replaced an athletic area deteriorating from years of neglect.
“We brought the field to the gym,” Hallman told the cheering students.
Cardozo’s new fields were the brainchild of a nonprofit group called Take the Field, a corporation co-founded in July 2001 by New York Giants co-owner Bob Tisch.
Take the Field, lauded as one of the most successful public-private partnerships in the city, has already renovated the athletic fields at Far Rockaway High School, Jamaica High School, Bryant High School in Long Island City and Beach Channel High School. It is in the process of fixing up fields at a number of other high schools around Queens, including neighborhood rival Bayside, which when mentioned by Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, drew a loud boo from the students.
“I can see you have a very loyal population,” Marshall said to Hallman.
A number of well-known figures attended the ribbon cutting, from politicians such as Marshall, City Councilman David Weprin (D-Hollis) and state Assemblyman Mark Weprin (D-Bayside) to St. John’s University men’s basketball coach Mike Jarvis and Howie Rose, a Cardozo grad and Bayside native who works as the television commentator for Mets and New York Islanders games.
Rose, a 1972 graduate of the school, marveled at the school spirit pervading the Cardozo gym last week. The ceremony included a short appearance by the school band and a spirited performance by the Cardozo cheerleaders.
“I grew up on 217th Street,” he said. “Really, I think when I got here in fall 1968 … we all just came and went.”
The sports broadcaster told the students “you guys have a gift here — a beautiful new field.”
Cardozo has arguably the best athletic program in the borough, touting perennial powerhouses in baseball, boys and girls soccer, softball, boys’ and girls’ tennis and boys’ and girls’ basketball. The lacrosse team, an up-and-coming program, was a city finalist last year.
Hallman said construction of the new fields, tennis courts and track, including drainage to prevent flooding on the field, took about six months. The facilities, which include two new electronic scoreboards, will serve baseball, lacrosse, soccer, tennis, track and softball teams at the school, Hallman said.
“It backs up the level of standards we have in the school,” Hallman said of the field’s reconstruction. “We’ve had a superb athletic program, now we have a facility that backs up our program.”
The athletes agreed.
Senior Edwin Vazquez, an East Elmhurst resident and a pitcher on the Cardozo baseball team, said “we’re happy to have a nice field.”
The old field was full of rocks, had worn out turf and lacked a backstop, said Vazquez and his brother, junior Angel Vazquez, a centerfielder on the team.
Softball coach Larry Alberts, who runs the girls’ varsity and junior varsity teams at Cardozo, said the new field was “like going from hell to heaven.”
Alberts, who has been with the school 25 years, said the field was great at first.
“We went from a very good field to a field that was impossible to play on,” he said, because of “time, neglect and overuse.”
Borough President Helen Marshall praised Richard Kahan, another co-founder of Take the Field, for his vision.
“He put his money where his mouth is,” said Marshall, whose office donated $500,000 in funds for the restoration.
City Councilman David Weprin (D-Hollis) agreed.
“It’s partnerships like this, between Take the Field and the city that make this type of project come to fruition,” he said.
Reach reporter Kathianne Boniello by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
