What you usually see crushed at Riddle-Pace Field is baseballs, but this time it’s the stands.

The stands of Riddle-Pace Field are being cleared out to make way for a newly renovated baseball stadium for the Troy Trojans.

Demolition began shortly after the last game of the season with new construction set to begin soon.

“A lot of demolition is going on,” says Head Baseball Coach Skylar Meade. “Its kind of amazing. You look nine days ago this process began and progress and just the progress has already been made it’s kind of wild to look at. How the whole right side is now gone this morning. Every recruit we’re talking to on the phone while we’re outside, they can hear bulldozers. They can see things happening so it’s really begun which is great for us and great for the program and, in the future, great for the fans and players.”

The renovations to Riddle-Pace were announced on the day Meade was hired and he says the new additions will add to the overall experience of being a Trojan baseball fan. Meade says that knowing a new stadium was in the works helped bring him to TROY and has seen the benefits that a new facility can have on a collegiate baseball program.

“It’s something we knew coming in,” says Meade. “This was already an incredibly appealing job at the time looking back a little less than a year ago but this took it to another stratosphere because we’re trying to do things that here that have never been done and sometimes you have to really invest in order to do that and you see that around the country with different programs. What’s happened is they’ve invested. You look at Coastal’s new stadium. When Louisville did it. Those programs ended up going to Omaha, one winning a national championship, once they invested in their stadium and we hope that the same future holds true for us.”

For the full story watch Simon’s report.