By Tony Chau

The new NYU varsity baseball and softball teams officially have their home fields for the upcoming season. 

NYU Athletics announced on Aug. 20 that the baseball team will play its home games at MCU Park and the softball team will share a home field with Fordham University at the Bahoshy Softball Complex.

Located in popular Brooklyn tourist attraction Coney Island, MCU Park has been the home of the New York Mets’ Class-A affiliate the Brooklyn Cyclones since 2001. Fittingly, the park is just minutes away from the iconic Brooklyn Cyclone rollercoaster.

Douglas Kimbler, the head coach of the baseball team, underscored the impact the park could have on the development of the team.

“Having a place to play like MCU Park, in the infancy of this program, is a prominent tool in recruiting high-end academic student-athletes to NYU,” Kimbler said.

Although baseball has been a club sport at the university for years, the program Kimbler alludes to is very much in its pilot stage.

The integration of the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering into the university brought with it a varsity baseball team, which NYU has not had since 1974 when it played in the NCAA Division I. This upcoming season, the team will be promoted from a club sport to the NCAA Division III.  

The baseball team will not be the only team playing on an outer-borough diamond, however, as the softball team will play in the heart of Fordham’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. Having undergone a major renovation just two years ago, the Bahoshy Softball Complex is now more fan-friendly with the addition of a new grandstand and backstop behind home plate.

Like the baseball program, the varsity softball team will play in the NCAA Division III and was also the byproduct of the Poly assimilation with only one distinction: it will be the first time the university has ever boasted a varsity softball team.

Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Information Jeffrey Bernstein expressed the excitement of the department at the end result of the search.

“A lot of time and effort went into securing these outstanding fields for our baseball and softball teams,” Bernstein said. “They are terrific facilities, and we look forward to utilizing them as we begin a new era of NYU varsity baseball and add varsity softball for the first time.”

In spite of the exciting announcement, fans will have to be patient while waiting to see the teams take the field because the baseball and softball seasons do not begin until February 2015 and March 2015, respectively.

The softball team will take the field at the Bahoshy Softball Complex at its first home game when it faces Montclair State University on March 21. A week later, the baseball team will make its MCU Park debut against Brandeis University on March 28.

A version of this article appeared in the Tuesday, Sept. 2 print edition. Email Tony Chau at [email protected].