Picture Enfield - Then And Now

ENFIELD, CT — Today's look back at Enfield history comes from my own personal photo collection from about 40 years ago, illustrating at least three things that no longer exist: the full-size baseball field behind Kosciuszko Junior High School, the school itself and a non-fat me.

This picture was taken at a baseball all-star game around 1980 or 1981, featuring teams from the Thompsonville Senior League. There's two more items that are no longer: Thompsonville merged with the Enfield Little League in 2015, and Senior League is now called Junior League (don't ask me why).

I believe Tommy Saso is one of the players walking onto the field (got that, Brat?). Behind the bleachers in the top right corner of the photo stood the chain-link enclosed sports area, containing a basketball court (with thin chain nets!), a racquetball wall and a pair of tennis courts.

Out of view in deep center field stood the track and the athletic field, which was home to Charger soccer and football teams (yes, the junior high school had football at that time). The picture below from Google Maps shows an aerial view of the grounds around 1990, eight years after "The Big K" had closed and Asnuntuck Community College had moved over from Phoenix Ave.

With the exception of the small garage door and the brick walls of the former science wing, the area shown in our featured photo looks completely different today. The courts and racquetball wall have been removed in favor of expanded parking, and the track was taken out in 2016 to accommodate the rapidly-expanding award-winning manufacturing technology program, which now has a separate building behind the college.

What really hit home for me, though, was seeing the recent removal of the large baseball field in favor of yet more parking, including a solar canopy. A driveway now snakes its way through what had been right-center field, extending behind the manufacturing center and continuing to the western end of the rear parking lot. Deep left and left-center fields now contain a large drainage ditch.

The fenced-in Little League diamond (ironically named Kennedy Field upon its dedication in the mid-1970s) still remains, as does the adjacent secondary field which looks toward Fox Hill Apartments. A pair of smaller fields, which I assume are used for tee ball and/or softball, now occupy the formerly empty space beyond the Kennedy Field right field fence. In yet another irony, a portion of the land formerly occupied by the athletic field and track, where healthy teenagers sprinted and booted their way to numerous victories, is now a designated smoking area.

Here are some recent pictures of the property as it looks today.

Last week's trivia answer:
Last week's trivia question was, "What retired Fermi High School department head was a 6-time national collegiate swimming All-American, including national champion in an individual event?" The answer: Steve Olson, who headed the Fermi science department for more than 20 years. As a junior at Springfield College in 1967, he won the national collegiate 100-yard backstroke championship in Los Angeles, and the 800 freestyle relay team was seventh. In his senior year, he was sixth in the 100 backstroke, and was also a member of Springfield's 400 freestyle relay team which placed eighth and the 800 freestyle relay team which finished sixth, earning All-American honors in three different events that season. As a sophomore in 1966, Olson and his 800 freestyle relay teammates had placed seventh. During his college days, he once swam against 4-time Olympic gold medalist Don Schollander ("He cleaned my clock," Olson recalled).

This week's trivia question:
Emma Zorda holds an academic distinction that will last forever in the annals of Enfield history. What is it? Post the answer in the comments section below, or on the Enfield Patch Facebook page.

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