67 acres purchased by town in 2002 for $185,000. Debt retired in 2006.

$29,000 received in grant money to develop recreational trail.

$7,500 approved by voters to match the trail grant.

$70,000 approved by voters to further develop sports fields.

$8,000 donated in cash by local businesses, organizations and residents.

$100,000 donated in local professional services, equipment and materials.

A field all their own

Minot – It feels good to be home. Ask the Minot school soccer players, coaches and parents, and they’ll tell you that home-field advantage means playing with a little more pride.

“Last year, we’d be in a hurry to get on a bus to go to the Poland high school field for our home games,” said Katie Love, an eighth-grade soccer player for the Minot Consolidated School Mustangs. “We’d have just a couple of parents there, but now it feels like this is ours.”

This year is different because the town’s Recreation Committee for the past four years has been developing town land into ball fields and a nonvehicular recreation trail. While much work remains to complete the total 160-acre vision, town officials and volunteers have recently completed one regulation-sized soccer field and 1.5 miles of recreational trail.

“It makes an unbelievable difference,” said Katharine McKay, coach of the girls’ soccer team. “Last year we practiced in the outfield of a softball field, and the first time they’d be on a soccer field would be at their first game. Five minutes before the game, I’d point out where their actual positions were.”

“It’s really exciting,” said Nathalie Rand, whose children play soccer. “I tell the kids that they’re making history because they’re the first to play on these fields.”

The new recreational trail also recently opened for public use. A survey of townspeople about four years ago resulted in the first of several recreational projects, said Lisa Cesare, secretary for the Recreation Committee and an instrumental force behind the project.

The trail is open for walking, bicycling and horseback riding, and cross-country skiing this winter, said Candice Benwitz Gilpatric, a committee member. The trail is restricted to nonvehicular use, she added.

Gigantic mounds of dirt at the recreation fields site suggest the amount of work yet to be done. The committee applied for a Major League Baseball grant to build a regulation-sized field but was turned down, Cesare said. However, the town gave $50,000 at the 2007 town meeting to go forward with the baseball field.

“I was so proud of this community when that happened,” said John Pratt, a fellow committee member. “It feels good to know that this town supports what we’re doing.”

Pratt’s father helped build the town’s two original instructional-level baseball fields 28 years ago. “It is just so fun to come out here and work and to know that we’re building something for our kids and for our town,” he said.

Benwitz Gilpatric estimated that the ball fields and the trail could become a reality with $400,000 over seven years. The town is about $111,500 and two years into the development, according to town documents. Slightly more than $8,000 went to satisfy Maine Department of Environmental Protection permit costs and requirements, according to town records.

Minot property taxpayers approved $70,000 the past two years, and local businesses, residents and organizations donated more than $8,000 in cash.

Much of the project savings have come from local volunteer contractors. Town Administrator Rhonda Irish estimated at least $85,000 worth of donated time, equipment and materials has gone into the project beyond paying contractors less than their normal rates for some of the paid hours.

“I’ve been amazed at how the people in this town come together and give of their time and their money,” said Irish, who was hired in May 2005. “I know I sound like a broken record because I’ve been saying this since the day I got here.”

The Recreation Committee, created by voter approval, was given the responsibility of developing land while the Minot-Hebron Athletic Association continues to administer recreational programs.

By the time the committee received its charge, the town had already purchased 67 acres of additional land to be used for future municipal development. The idea evolved to connect existing ball fields, Town Office, the school, and the purchased property into one contiguous 160-acre parcel, Benwitz Gilpatric said.