Staff photo / Neel Madhavan. East pitcher Francisco Rodriguez throws a pitch towards home plate Tuesday evening against Chaney. The Golden Bears christened their new turf field with a 10-9 victory over the Cowboys.

YOUNGSTOWN — East kicked off a new era in its long, storied athletics history on Tuesday.

In the first game on their newly constructed field, the Golden Bears christened it by opening up their season with a 10-9 victory over rival Chaney.

“This is good for them, you can see how happy they are to win the first game,” said East head coach Elvis Colon. “I’m happy to get this in my first experience as a coach, coaching at this level.”

The new field has been in the making for a while, according to Youngstown City Schools District Superintendent Justin Jennings.

The new baseball and soon-to-be-completed football fields are part of the district’s plans to develop new athletics facilities, including a middle school football field at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School and a track at Chaney High School.

“My impetus for getting our facilities up to par was, my first day here, I was at a football game and I was standing in grass, dirt and concrete,” Jennings said. “I just knew it was something different that we needed to do in order to help our student-athletes. It definitely could be a recruiting tool, but I think our student-athletes deserve a nice place to play and safely as well. COVID kind of helped us because it gave us some funding to do some things, but the impetus was really just trying to ramp up our athletics again.”

Staff photo / Neel Madhavan. Youngstown City School District Superintendent Justin M. Jennings, far right, speaks to a crowd at East High School during a ribbon cutting for the new turf baseball and softball field. The field was constructed by The Motz Group of Cincinnati, the same company that installed the new artificial field turf at the historic Rayen Stadium. From left are East alum and former Atlanta Braves player Kenneth E. Smith; and board members Juanita Walker, Tina Cvetkovich, Brenda Kimble, Kenneth Donaldson and Tiffany Patterson, and East High School principal Debra Campbell.

Before Tuesday’s game began, East alum and former Atlanta Braves player Kenneth E. Smith had the honor of throwing out the first pitch.

Smith remembered back to his days at East, recalling an old saying that had been around for years, “the ground at East High School is hallowed ground.”

“(It means) that the players before you, when you get on the field, you do your best and you give your best. You may not win, but give your best because this is hallowed ground,” Smith said.

“Growing up in Youngstown on the East side and graduating from East High School, to see them put this together for the players, the school and the city, it’s just amazing and people should really be proud of it. I’ve been to a lot of places when I played baseball in the major leagues and you go to different cities and travel a lot and you see different ballparks and places. For the city to have this one, it really lets me know that the city is going in the right direction.”

The game was a back and forth affair.

East started well, scoring the first run of the game in the second inning with an RBI from Luis Maldonado, but things went a bit awry from there.

Chaney capitalized on four walks and a myriad of wild pitches and fielding errors by scoring five runs in the top of the third inning. Colon called them “mental mistakes,” and indicated that it’s something his team needs to limit going forward.

However, East then stopped the bleeding with a 5-6 double play, then proceeded to score three runs in the bottom of the third to cut into the deficit.

After the Cowboys added to their lead with two runs in the top of the fifth, the Golden Bears came roaring back with four runs in the bottom of the fifth that came on three hits. Francisco Rodriguez, Yadiol Lopez and Anfornee Roman each tallied RBIs during the rally.

Chaney got two more runs in the sixth to retake the lead, but East did the same in the bottom of half of the inning as Oscar Agosto stole home on a wild pitch to claim the win for the Golden Bears. The game was shortened to six innings due to impending darkness.

“I think for us, the youth of our team showed and they now understand how the game has to be played,” said Chaney head coach Eric Gruber. “A lot of what we’ve been able to do during the offseason, we haven’t been able to be outside. So a lot of these situations, they’re seeing for the first time. But I think now hopefully, after seeing some of the things that they have to do, we can all learn from it, build from it, progress from it and be able to move on and not make a lot of those same plays and mistakes that we made.”

nmadhavan@tribtoday.com