The sun shone bright on the afternoon of
November 1, All Saints Day and the day of the groundbreaking ceremony for the field
house being built on the site of the McNichol Athletic Field on Moore Street
between 25th and 26th Streets. Cheerleaders from Saints
Neumann-Goretti High School stood in two rows facing each other, black and gold
pom-poms in hand, to welcome guests to the field used by the school’s football
and baseball teams. Nearly 100 alumni and friends turned out.
Once the crowd had assembled, the football and
baseball teams and the cheerleaders gathered behind the podium set up on the
southeast corner of the field. After John Murawski, the school’s president, led
a prayer service, he spoke about the meaning of the field house that would be
built on the site of the old Saint John Neumann school, which is now a senior
citizens housing facility.
“God approves of recreation for the relaxation
of the mind and the exercise of the body to foster mental, physical and
spiritual well-being,” Murawski said.
In the early 1980s, the McNichol family, who
used to run a trucking company, donated the land to the Saint John Neumann High
School. Since the 2004 merging of Neumann, founded in 1934, and Saint Maria
Goretti High School, established in 1955, the high schools have retained use of
the field, although the athletes have had no where to change and shower. The
Development staff at Neumann-Goretti wrote a grant and, in 2005, received a
Department of Community and Economic Development grant in the amount of
$250,000.
John Wagner, class of 1974, works
in Health Care Services, the division of the Archdiocese that now owns the
property where the field house will be built. While the school owns the field,
but “so as to not take away from the field space we requested that Health Care
Services allow us to build on their property,” Murawski said in a follow-up
interview. Joe Sweeney, Secretary for Health Care Services, and Susanne Lurato
O'Grady from Health Care Services were also instrumental in the process. “The
largest contributor to moving this process along was Hank Clinton, class
of 1971,” Murawski said. “Hank worked tirelessly to push all of the
architectural through zoning properly, met with architect in the design
phase and continues to oversee the legal aspects of building the field
house.”
The field house represents the continued
fulfillment of the Neumann-Goretti community’s
commitment to “an unparalleled education for the youth of Philadelphia,”
Murawski said. “This addition along with the recent additions of two new
science labs, a media center, the City's first Nintendo Wii Fitness Lab and the
City's first iPad Lab are proof that Neumann-Goretti has made this commitment
and that we will continue our strides to offer a top notch Catholic Education
here in South Philadelphia.”
The building of a field house,
equipped with a
coach’s office, a concession stand, a film room, 90 lockers, a storage area and
a weight room, shows the 710 students currently
enrolled in Neumann-Goretti “that the diocese and the school care enough for
them to provide them with a state of the art facility that they will be able to
be proud of,” Murawski said. “The students are chomping at the bit to say they
were the first team to use the facility and they are all excited to be the first team to hang their championship plaque
on the wall.”
Construction on the field house should be
completed April 1, 2012 – just in time for baseball season, Murawski said.
This 600-word story appeared on page 92 in the Schoolyard section of Philadelphia RowHome Magazine's February/March/April 2012 issue.
