Building for Everyone: What We Learned Building Champions' Field

Champions' Field at the Gadsden Sports Park was designed for athletes with disabilities — but the design decisions that made it work for them made the whole facility better. That's what inclusive design actually means in practice. Not a ramp bolted on the side of a standard facility, but a space where accessibility is built into the ground plan from the start. When the City of Gadsden asked us to build it as Phase Three of the sports park complex, we learned a lot about what that difference looks like in the field.

The ADA sets legal minimums for sports facilities — accessible routes, compliant parking, wheelchair-accessible seating, locker room standards. Most facilities meet those minimums and stop there. True inclusive design goes further. It uses rubberized playing surfaces instead of mixed grass, dirt, and clay — which eliminates the surface inconsistencies that create mobility barriers while also reducing injuries for all players. It ensures that every area where activity happens is connected by an accessible route, without requiring someone to cut through another court to reach their field. It considers sensory needs alongside physical ones. These aren't expensive additions when you plan for them from the start. They become expensive when you try to retrofit them onto a facility that wasn't designed with them in mind.

Nationally, the demand is clear. Nearly nine in ten Americans say it's important that their community offer inclusive recreation options. The Miracle League model — now 200,000 participants across 180 facilities nationwide — demonstrates that adaptive athletic facilities aren't niche projects. They anchor recreation programs and attract participation from families who previously had no options. Municipal recreation departments increasingly expect this as a baseline, not a bonus.

For any municipality planning a parks or recreation project, the question isn't whether to include accessible features — the question is whether to integrate them from design phase one or pay more to add them later. We've done both. The integrated approach is better in every way: lower cost, better outcome, and a facility that actually serves the community it was built for.