MANSFIELD — After a decades-long slumber, a sleeping giant has opened its eye.
A revival is under way at Cyclops Circle.
The four-field complex on the city’s north side was the center of north central Ohio’s slow-pitch softball universe throughout the 1980s and ’90s. As the popularity of the men’s game began to wane in the early-2000s, however, Cyclops gradually slipped into a state of disrepair.
Grassroots efforts to breathe new life into the once-proud facility would pop up from time to time, but none of them gained traction — until now.
With Warren Rupp, Inc. leading the charge, a committee to revitalize Cyclops has been hard at work since late last fall. The pace has quickened in the past three months, even as the coronavirus pandemic has swept across the country. The Revive Cyclops Facebook group has attracted more than 1,000 members since its launch in late-January and, as the weather has warmed, volunteers have lined up to do whatever they can to further the cause.
The push to renovate the facility began in earnest late last summer.
“My wife, Robyn, works at Warren Rupp and they had a veteran’s tournament down there that I helped them put on last year. I want to say it was during the first week of August,” said Jeff Montgomery, a 2002 Mansfield Senior graduate and a driving force behind the revitalization effort. “They got in touch with the city and arranged to use that park and I explained to them that it was in rough shape.
“They ended up having eight or nine teams in the tournament and I joked with my wife and some of (Warren Rupp’s) human resources people that they should look into fixing up Cyclops because it’s right across the street. They could use it as a pet project and turn it into something special.”
Robyn Montgomery took her husband’s suggestion and ran with it. The Revive Cyclops Committee was born with the full backing of a grateful softball community.
“I’ve lived in Mansfield pretty much my whole life and I know how many wonderful people live in this community,” Robyn Montgomery said. “There are so many companies and individual citizens who are willing to help out.
“The responses just came flooding in. Cyclops is such a huge part of Mansfield’s history that, once people started seeing things happen, they said, ‘Let’s keep this going.’ ”
The Rupp Foundation and the Richland Foundation donated the seed money for the project. It was matched by the city.
“We had some other donations come in … and we had about $32,000 to start out with,” said Mark Abrams, the city’s parks and recreation department manager. “This project has moved really fast, especially since most of the labor is being done by volunteers.
“The group of people that we’re working with really wants to see this done.”
The entire complex will be getting a facelift. The press box already has been fitted with a new roof, the fields are in the process of being excavated and just last weekend the existing bleachers and dugouts were demolished and will soon be rebuilt.
“Our initial plans were to have some kids from area schools construct the dugouts to gain some experience, but that isn’t going to happen with the coronavirus,” Jeff Montgomery said. “We were going to have about 50 kids from Pioneer (Career and Technology Center) come out on April 24 to do their community service day, but that got shut down as well.”
The longterm plan, Jeff Montgomery said, is to restore Cyclops to its former glory.
“We were actually supposed to start leagues the second week of May. Monday nights and Tuesday nights we’ll have Church League men’s softball and on Thursday and Sunday nights we’re going to have competitive men’s softball leagues,” Jeff Montgomery said. “We had eight or nine Church League teams signed up for both nights. We had 10 teams for the Thursday league and 12 for the Sunday league.”
Wicked Fastpitch, a local youth softball program, has also been instrumental in the revitalization effort. The youth program will use Cyclops as a practice facility for the immediate future but would eventually like to relocate. The late Darren Miller, a 2002 Madison graduate, was a driving force in the project.
“We will be dedicating a field in his memory,” Jeff Montgomery said.
The Cyclops committee want to continue build on its early momentum.
There were a few people who tried to get the place up and going before, but for whatever reason it didn’t work out,” Jeff Montgomery said. “I grew up there and then I started playing there and I hated seeing something like that be forgotten about.
“Once we got it rolling, it’s like we woke a sleeping giant. People have great memories of the place and they would like to see it return to what it once was.”
