Two parent-coaches restore Arlington Heights baseball field

Published 10:19 am Thursday, July 9, 2026

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS – Stephen Gillis and Shawn Kingsmore had a problem.

The field designated for the Stilly Valley Little League ‘Rookies’ team that the two men coached this past spring was borderline unusable. Gillis and Kingsmore, who each had a son on the team, quickly realized that they would need a better spot to develop the group of players aged 6-8.

“It was the outfield of a field that was already kind of destroyed,” said Gillis, who works for North Sound Pest Control. “So really it was going to be a kind of ballfield where you couldn’t even do fielding. You couldn’t do anything at it, it would just be pop-ups and some grounders, and so (Kingsmore) was like, ‘We need to find something else.’”

Added Kingsmore, of D&R Design: “There’s just not enough fields in Arlington, and we were put in a really bad place. For the kids, we wanted to make sure that they’re wanting to come back and play again next year.”

The solution was a different field that effectively died around the time the oldest kids on the team were born.

Tucked away at the end of a dirt road behind the Arlington Heights Improvement Club rests a field that hosted countless Little League games for over 50 years, but has been left mostly unused since 2018 and fallen into disrepair.

Laura Hofmann has worked in the Arlington Heights Improvement Club since 1996. Ever since the field’s decline eight years ago, Hofmann has held off outside attempts to acquire the field from the Improvement Club to turn it into farmland or a park. She holds fond memories of the decades of local baseball history the field possesses, and she held out hope that it could become a new home for a local Little League team.

However, aside from a Stilly Venom Baseball 10U team utilizing the field for a few practices last fall, it remained a vacant patch of grass and a mound of dirt. A ghost of what Arlington Heights baseball used to be.

“There’s not a ton of money coming into the group that manages this field,” Gillis said. “So for them, the maintenance is kind of, ‘Let’s do what we can and get donations where we can,’ because they’re such a small organization that it’s hard to pick those funds.”

That was, until Gillis and Kingsmore approached Hofmann about restoring the field for their team to practice on. With help from the community, the Arlington Heights field had new life.

Gillis and Kingsmore spent time reaching out to connections within the community who would be willing to help. W5 Construction Services, whose owner Will Wedekind has known Gillis since middle school, was the first to chip in. Many of the other business owners who agreed to help and donate also held personal connections to the field from their childhood, which turned it into a bigger community effort.

W5 Construction donated time and equipment to level out the field, which had developed a giant dirt mound that local kids would ride ATVs over. With the grass mowed and some minor fixes to ensure the safety of the dugouts, the Arlington Heights field became suitable for the Rookie team to practice on.

According to Hofmann, the field was not approved for official Stilly Valley Little League play due to its distance from Arlington (3.5 miles), but the two coaches believe that a fully restored field would make it a worthy site despite the distance. Stilly Valley Little League did not respond to The Herald’s request for comment in time for publication.

“I can see this field being one of the nicest (dirt) fields in Arlington,” Kingsmore said. “Obviously, we got some turf fields around, but this will be one of the nicest fields in Arlington, hopefully.”

After making the basic fixes for the field to be viable for practice, the focus turned to raising funds to support a full-scale restoration. Hofmann had the idea to form a charity softball game to raise awareness.

As Kingsmore assembled a team of dads whose children played in Stilly Valley Little League, Hofmann stopped by a commissioner’s meeting for Snohomish County Fire District 21 – the local crew – to see if they would be willing to form the opposing team.

Fire Chief Chad Schmidt had grown up playing in the Stilly Valley Little League and remembered facing the Arlington Aces on that exact field in Arlington Heights. He was immediately on board with helping out for a charity game.

“I grew up playing out here,” Schmidt said. “And so to see games happening out here, and actually teams practicing again after watching it kind of be overgrown and nobody coming out here has been really cool to kind of just see that happening again.”

The two teams descended on the field, freshly nicknamed ‘The Sandlot,’ on June 26. Despite heavy rain pouring down, turning the entire infield into a slip-n-slide, neither team cared. They played out the entire seven-inning game.

“We were talking a monsoon,” Schmidt said. “I haven’t been in rain like that in a long time. It was that bad.”

Added Kingsmore: “When people slid, they slid like 15 feet. They just kept going.”

The kids were able to get in on the action, announcing their fathers’ names as they walked to the plate and playing walk-up songs for them. The fun atmosphere the game created outweighed the weather, and many spectators stuck around to watch despite the conditions.

“People want to see it as much as us. We’re not the only ones, and we’re not crazy,” Kingsmore said. “This is something that everybody wants to see happen, and it needs to be great.”

Between the charity game and other donations, Gillis and Kingsmore have raised around $1,500 to $2,000 to contribute to a full restoration. They plan to host another game between the Little League dads and firefighters to raise even more money and more awareness with a goal of $10,000.

The money would be used to fill and level the outfield, supply the infield with proper dirt and upgrade the dugouts, backstop and fencing. If they can hit that goal, the duo hopes to reach $25,000-30,000 by this fall to make even bigger changes, which include revitalizing the second backstop on the far end of the field to allow for two teams to practice at once.

“What we’re trying to reach, for fundraising goals, would be roughly $10,000,” Gillis said. “Just from donations from local businesses, and with the next (charity) game. That alone goes a long way at a little field like this. Already with the amount of donations we’re getting just labor-wise with the local businesses, every couple of dollars count.”

In the meantime, they’ll focus on the next steps for restoration and reaching that first fundraising goal. The Arlington Heights Improvement Club can be contacted by email – ahic12221@gmail.com – for more information.

The second charity game is tentatively scheduled for Aug. 21, and while it represents another opportunity to turn a fully revitalized Arlington Heights field into a reality, it also provides the firefighters with a chance to avenge their loss to the Little League dads in the first game.

“There’s a lot of pride in the Arlington Heights community for this field,” Schmidt said. “Because back in ‘the good old days,’ each team was from the community. Arlington Heights had its own team. Bryant had its own team, all these different teams, and so there’s a lot of pride in this field and what used to happen here.

“So I think you’re going to see a lot of the community start to kick in time and money. … I think you’ll see the community kind of rally around the fact that these guys are trying to get this back up.”