A pressbox with accompanying box seats, all located behind home plate, are new additions to the Bishop O’Connell High School baseball field for the 2025 spring season.
The new look was completed in recent weeks, prior to the Knights’ March 7 home opener against the Potomac School Panthers, a 6-3 O’Connell win.
The 157 bright blue (school color) box seats were filled with spectators during the opener.
The seats encircle the new gray pressbox. No other high-school baseball fields in Arlington or Fairfax counties have such seats.
The additions replace traditional bench bleacher seating and what was a makeshift pressbox area at the Jacobs Field at Burch Stadium artificial-turf complex venue. The public-address sound system that goes with the pressbox is still being installed.
Bishop O’Connell athletic director Joe Wootten said a generous donation by Steve and Ann Marie Fay helped fund the additions.
“We really like how the additions look and have worked out,” Wootten told ARLnow.
The updates, which began during the summer and were completed in February, are the most recent since the field underwent a total renovation in 2013, when the ends of the fields were reversed. Dugouts, a bullpen and batting cages were added later, then artificial turf was installed in 2020.
The O’Connell field is named after two former head baseball coaches at the school, Harry “Jake” Jacobs and Al Burch. Each won more than 200 games at the helm of the program.
O’Connell is scheduled to play 11 more regular-season home games during the 2025 season, including a Thursday, March 20 contest at 4:30 p.m. against the Yorktown Patriots in an all-Arlington clash. Former Yorktown head coach John Skaggs is now an assistant coach with O’Connell.
In O’Connell’s home-opening victory, junior right-hander Shota Fogus started on the mound and got the win. The baseball commit to play at the College of Charleston worked four innings of one-hit ball with six strikeouts and no walks. He threw 56 pitches.
Big hits for O’Connell went to James Robinson with an RBI triple and Chaz Walker with a run-scoring single. Robinson had two of the team’s six hits. Chase Armour also had two hits and an RBI, and Jack Woda doubled.
