When Fitzie Cowing stepped up as field operations director for Belmont Youth Soccer, she didn’t expect the role would involve a weekly walk around the fields her teams use, looking for holes, dog feces, and general safety concerns on the soccer fields.
From sprains and breaks to road rash caused by falls on sandy patches used as a temporary fill solution, “we’ve had injuries,” Cowing said on a recent walk around Pequossette Park. After pointing out the uneven surface of the field and multiple holes, she scanned the area for shards of glass or stray rocks left over from an attempt to fill and reseed the grass a few years ago. Within a few seconds, a small shard of glass and a small rock caught her eye.
Cowing is hopeful, however, that the recently approved funding to support a field maintenance plan, which involves the input of an expert, will be the start of a “new era of field maintenance.”
“I think every coach just wants their kids to have a safe and enjoyable experience,” she said.
According to Town Administrator Patrice Garvin, the Department of Public Works has lost six full-time employees since 2022. Currently, there are four full-time equivalents in the department’s Parks & Cemetery division.
“With all departments operating under 2.5% increase or less, town budgets are constrained,” she said.
In 2024, after growing concern from the public about the state of the fields, the Fields Working Group was established to support the DPW director in developing a comprehensive maintenance plan. The Select Board appointed eight individuals to serve as members, with Cowing, headed into her 16th season and eighth year as a coach, among them.
“Our town currently lacks in-house expertise on athletic field maintenance, and this has led to a reactive rather than strategic approach,” Garvin said to Town Meeting members in May. “We triage our fields instead of maintaining them with a formal plan. This approach, paired with a limited annual budget of $40,000 and a loss of six full-time employees in five years, has resulted in years of under-maintenance.”
Cowing said each field now has a mound of dirt dropped off for coaches to use as fill when holes are discovered in their athletes’ playing areas. Other than the holes, players also must remember to negotiate large swaths of weeds or sand, which don’t provide the same stability as grass.
After months of discussion at the working group level, Town Meeting members authorized the town to allocate $225,000 from the Overlay Release to pay for a consultant to devise a professional maintenance plan.
“This would not only help recover from years of deferred maintenance … but also allows us to better understand how usage patterns affect field conditions and long-term sustainability,” Garvin said. “This isn’t a short-term fix. It’s the beginning of a more sustainable field management strategy.”
She called it an “initial infusion” for regular, proactive field upkeep on soil and usage needs.
“The maintenance plan itself is a professionally managed schedule. We have a managed scheduled plan we would follow and we would hire out contracted services that will do the fertilization, the aeration, the seeding, the top dressing, and all the other treatments that are required.”
The funding request, she explained, was based on the number of fields, which encompass 23 acres. The fields at the new Chenery Park complex will also be included in the plan.
“It does seem like the right start,” Cowing said. “We need expertise in order to get a start.”
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Still, while hopeful for this “new era of field maintenance,” she can’t help but worry the realization will soon come to pass that there will be more maintenance and repair work than previously anticipated. With departments strained everywhere and in some ways competing for a limited pool of resources, finding the necessary funding may present an ongoing challenge.
“We’re a very small piece in a very big picture, but we also feel strongly about the safety of the athletes,” she said.
Beyond the fiscal year 2026, Belmont will have to shift to recurring revenues to fund the maintenance of the town’s fields, according to Garvin. A few that have already been identified include: the field revolving fund, which comes from money collected through youth programming; school field rentals; and an increase in the annual allowance from the operating budget. Typically, about $40,000 is set aside for field maintenance, she said.
On top of the physical maintenance plan, Garvin also told Town Meeting members that part of this process will also involve coming up with policies on how the fields should or can be used, when and whether there are rest periods, and if dogs will be allowed on fields.
“This is a program and maintenance plan we’re excited about,” Garvin said.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect spelling of Fitzie Cowing’s name.
