BEATRICE – The Gage County Board Wednesday approved two grants from lodging tax revenue, to help support a couple of projects in Beatrice.
The supervisors approved a $40,000 request to help fund additional Hannibal Park ball field improvements.


Beatrice Public Properties Director Mark Pethoud says the total project comes to about $190,000. 

"Over the last couple of years if you've seen the improvements out at Hannibal Park....we've done diamonds one, two and three...with different groups, with City of Beatrice and tourism money. What we're doing is looking at updating fields four and five and putting in safety netting and new backstops. With that improvement, we're going to move...separate fields four and five, and put a sidewalk in between for ADA accessibility and better flow. When we built them back in 1978, they were just temporary diamonds. Now, we hold state tournaments there and we have seven fields there. With doing fields four and five, we will move five out...then we will light those two fields and then have seven fields for our tournaments."


About seven or eight baseball or softball tournaments take place at Hannibal each summer….along with hosting Beatrice Lady Orange softball and nightly league play.


The Gage County Visitors Committee recommended approval of the grant request….and on a second application to upgrade old scoreboards at the Beatrice Municipal Auditorium. That requests totaled $5,000….for a project that will cost a total of about $26,000.

Dakota Hurley is Gage County Tourism Director.  "In the application here they talk about hosting the Mudecas Tournament. There's also a home school tournament that brings people into the community. Another thing with the scoreboards is that NSAA will be moving to a shot clock that you need to have....so the new scoreboards will have a shot clock....so they'll be ahead of that requirement."


Pethoud says the current scoreboards were installed in the 1970s. The municipal auditorium is home to the annual Mudecas tournament…..one of the oldest basketball tournaments in Nebraska that hosts schools from around the region.