Foundation Academy breaks ground on $1.5 million athletic complex -- Observer Preps

WINTER GARDEN The dream of an on-campus football stadium is becoming a reality at Foundation Academy.

The private school in south Winter Garden held a groundbreaking ceremony Friday morning to celebrate the beginning of construction on its $1.5 million athletic complex. The new complex will include a football field, track, lights, stands with a pressbox, scoreboard, goal posts and field house. The complex will service the Lions' football, soccer and track programs.

The school's football team usually plays its home football games at Walker Field in Winter Garden and it has had no track to practice on (though that hasn't hindered the growth of the Lions' track and field program). The school's soccer teams have previously played on an on-campus field that will be demolished to make away for the new facility.

Athletic director David Baginski, who guided most of the ceremony, said that the Foundation Academy football team will take the field on its new field at some point during the fall 2017 season. The hope is for the field to be ready for the Lions' home opener Aug. 25 against Cambridge Christian, though Baginski acknowledges it is an ambitious goal.

"With Walker Field, we consider it home, but the kids want to play on campus. This is a big thing for us."

— Brad Lord, football coach

The secondary target date would be to give the school's homecoming game a little added meaning, having the field ready to debut for Foundation's Oct. 6 showdown against Seven Rivers Christian.

Either way, for football coach Brad Lord, who has been on campus for 10 years and taken the program to the playoffs in four of the past five seasons, the idea of playing a true home game this fall is an exciting one. 

"With Walker Field, we consider it home, but the kids want to play on campus," Lord said. "This is a big thing for us."

For Baginski, who is in his seventh year of being the school's director of athletics, it is a special occasion to be able to reward the school's athletes and coaches who have worked so hard and made due with whatever prior arrangements may have been necessary.

"It's always been a dream ... it really started taking root about three years ago," Baginski said. "It's just so rewarding, because it's all the hard work that the coaches and the athletes have put in that has really given us no choice but to do something like this."

The acceleration of the plans for an on-campus athletics facility three years ago roughly coincides with the hiring of David Buckles as the school's president. Buckles said Friday that while building a football stadium was not his top priority when he took the job, he quickly realized its value in the bigger picture vision for the school — a vision that includes more classroom space and a fine arts building, among other things.

"My first process was to look at the school as a whole and assess 'what are our needs and how do we grow?'" Buckles said. "I hate to use the old cliché 'build it and they will come' — but as I started going around and speaking to other heads of schools throughout the state, one of the things I found out was an athletic complex stimulated their growth."

The growth of Foundation — and its potential for more growth — seems to be tied to the writ large growth of Winter Garden and Horizon West. The school acquired its property on Tilden Road a decade ago in a move that has proved prescient. Soon, a new football stadium will be facing drivers on their daily commute along State Road 429 — another prospect that excites someone like Lord who is anxious to grow the brand of his program.

"A lot of kids are coming here to get a good education and play football," Lord said. "With the influx to this side of town, this is a great place."

Contact Steven Ryzewski at [email protected].