Jack Cust Academy

The turf field at the Jack Cust Academy, Jul-2011.

Visible here is the support for the training bubble erected during the winter.

• Location: Route 206, Raritan Twp (Hunterdon Co.), N.J.
• Opened: 2004

The all-weather field is rimmed by a short concrete wall that serves as support for a bubble that is raised during the winter months, allowing for year-round training. The bubble is not quite high enough to allow winter games, though. At the end of one particularly snowy winter, some college games were scheduled at the Diamond Nation complex. When a sports information director doubted that they would get the coming weekend’s games in, I asked him, “Are they under the bubble?” He replied, ”I think they’re under a delusion.”

My only visit was on an excruciatingly hot day in July, when a couple of 18U travel teams got a game in at this field and I watched it ahead of a trip to a Phillies game that evening.