- Santa Fe College broke ground on the Hitchcock Family Clubhouse, a new locker room facility for baseball and softball teams opening in spring 2027.
- The clubhouse will include locker rooms, showers, laundry, umpire spaces, training areas, and covered batting cages to enhance athlete experience.
- The Hitchcock family donated for this project to support student-athletes, improving recruiting and providing safe, dedicated facilities for the teams.
Santa Fe College celebrated a monumental milestone on Thursday.
For the first time, SF will have a new locker room facility for its baseball and softball teams.
“We’re here to celebrate the locker room, but we’re truly here to celebrate our incredible students, who for years have honed their craft, come out to this field, excelled the women’s softball team to No. 6 in the nation, and then when it rains, they’ve got to run to their cars,” said Santa Fe College president Dr. Paul Broadie II. “When they get out here, they’ve got to change in their car to get on the field. Not anymore, thanks to the Hitchcock family.”
Hitchcock Family Clubhouse’s groundbreaking ceremony attracted past and present athletes and coaches, administrators, board of trustees, distinguished guests, and the Hitchcock family.
“This is major,” said Alan Hitchcock, who sold Hitchcock’s Supermarkets 18 years ago and then became a part of the Santa Fe College Foundation Board of Directors. “It’s just not a locker room; it’s an investment in the growth and success of our students. It’s an investment, saying to the students, we believe in you, keep going. It’s an investment in our coaches and our athletic director, where we say we support you, and thank you for pouring into our students to help them excel.”
He is a big ambassador for student-athletes.
“The student-athletes, they deserve opportunity, just like every student at Santa Fe College deserves an opportunity and a good opportunity,” Hitchcock said. “They work hard; they’re student athletes. I’m pretty sure there’s no NIL money at Santa Fe College, so the least they deserve is a nice facility to take a shower, get dressed, store the clothes and get out of a lightning storm.”
Santa Fe softball coach Savanah Webster, who led the Saints to their first World Series since 2013 this past spring, is excited about the new facility.
“This is huge, I mean it’s a vision that we’ve had since at least I’ve been here, and 12 years ago, so to see it actually starting to break ground is really cool,” she said. “It’s an example of the commitment that the school has to the student athlete and it’s awesome to see.”
Webster, who led the Saints to their most wins (48) since the 2008 season, won multiple games in the World Series for the first time since 2008 (1-2 in 2013).
“It was electric,” Webster said. “The experience was more than what you think it would be going there, so it was a lot of fun.”
McKenna O’Sullivan, who signed with SF out of Gainesville High School, said she hasn’t had a locker room since she transferred to GHS from Columbia (Lake City) HS her sophomore year.
“At Gainesville High School, I didn’t have a locker room or anything, so just having one is going to make the camaraderie a little bit better,” said O’Sullivan, a psychology major who wants to get her doctorate in sports psychology. “It’s just going to give us a place to store food for between games, give us a place to go before practice, after practice, or like in between games, so I’m just really excited and I love to see everybody here to support us.”
Former Oak Hall School baseball player Gavin Jones, who redshirted this past year at SF, said the new facility will help with recruiting.
“I think that recruits want to see nice facilities, and I think that’s something that can help Santa Fe get the best athletes in the state in this region,” said Jones, who is a business management major.
The clubhouse will be home to baseball and softball locker room spaces, umpire changing space, shower facilities, laundry capabilities and an upgraded training area to service all student-athletes at both fields.
“I think covered batting cages is what stood out to me when Chanda (Stebbins) first showed me the video,” said Jones. “I can’t tell you how much better I got in high school when I was spending late nights in the cages under the lights, or when it was raining, and that’s stuff that we don’t have here, so we’re having to come really early to hit before it rains. So, I think that’s something that I’m really looking forward to.”
The Hitchcock Family Clubhouse is expected to open in the spring of 2027, with additional phases to come that will further enhance the student-athlete experience and fan accessibility.
“It’s just really exciting to be able to pay legacies forward,” said Santa Fe College Athletics Director Chanda Stebbins. “It’s been almost four and a half decades since the inception of baseball here, and so the fact that now we’re adding locker rooms, it’s just very meaningful.”
It was meaningful for Harry Tholen, too.
Tholen, who was hired to coach baseball at SF in 1981, said it’s been “a long time coming.”
“The facility means an awful lot to the student athletes, to the college, and the community,” he said. “Future looks bright and I’m happy for Santa Fe.”
Tholen, who hired head coach Johnny Wiggs as his pitching coach in 1992, started the program in 1982 and in his fourth year there, they won state and went to the Junior College World Series in 1985.
“I was happy that I got a chance to build the program, and Johnny took it to another level,” said Tholen, who had the field dedicated to him in 2024. “This facility will take it to another level.”
Stebbins said she was excited to see the new facility come to fruition.
“I know a lot of people have come before me who have really laid their heart, sweat, and tears into this,” she said. “The Hitchcocks generously donated about 10 or 12 years ago and so being able to see that really turn into a building is exciting.”
Wiggs set some milestones as head coach, including his 500th win at Santa Fe, and his 800th win overall, but recently retired as SF coach after 20 seasons.
“Humbling experience,” Hitchcock said before sharing a funny story. “Johnny had taken our baseball team to the World Series, and a group of us said, ‘Hey, our facilities are kind of behind; if we’re going to keep Johnny here, we’re going to have to do something.’ Well, it took us this long to get it done, and dadgum Johnny left before we got it done.”
Wiggs is gone, but Webster will be back to be a part of history.
“It’s game-changing, you know,” Webster said. “Obviously, with the weather, the heat, everything that goes on here, it gives them an opportunity to have a safe place to go to. It gives them an opportunity to team bond and really just have a place to call their own, so it’s an amazing thing to see happen.”