Tolleson’s plush green, velvety grass and perfectly manicured infield looks like something out of a magazine, a throwback to the classic baseball movie, “Field of Dreams.”

That’s from all of the hours that longtime coach Scott Richardson spent taking care of field after the state shut down schools last March at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. The high school baseball season was abruptly stopped and never resumed.

He couldn’t coach, so figured he might as well seed and plant and rake and groom.

The Tolleson Union High School District took it a step further than most districts in Arizona by also cancelling the fall and winter sports seasons during the current school year for its six schools, erring on the side of extreme caution because of COVID-19 metrics. The coronavirus hit communities in the Southwest Valley school district particularly hard.

Athletes weren’t even able to step foot on the field for most of 2020 from just after March 15, 2020, until March 8 of this year, when the district finally said OK to spring sports, which also includes softball, track and field, boys volleyball, beach volleyball, tennis, spring golf and spring football practices.

“The only thing that I knew for sure was that I was going to plant rye grass and our field was going to be beautiful,” Richardson said, recalling last year. “We’re going to have some straight edges. I got a chance to do the mound.

“You know you’re bored and it has to be a pandemic when you’re looking forward to working on the visitor’s bullpen mound. That’s demented in itself.”

Since COVID hit, Tolleson players not only saw their 2020 season lost, but some lost family members and a beloved assistant coach Ash Friederich to the virus.

Friederich, an English teacher, was 40. He was an assistant coach in both the football and baseball programs.

Friederich conducted Zoom classes up until the day he was admitted to the hospital. Less than two hours later, he died.

“It was crazy,” Tolleson senior pitcher/outfielder Tommy Urbina said. “He was talking to me, and he said, ‘I don’t feel good.’ But he said, ‘I’m going to be good, though. See you on Monday.’ It was weird.”

It hit senior pitcher/outfielder Eliseo Palomino hard.

“You’re so used to seeing him out here, being your coach,” Palomino said. “He jokes around with you. He’s a great guy. Energy was always high.”

“He was always on the players’ side,” Urbina said.

Richardson called him “the good cop,” adding that a memorial banner will hang on the outfield fence in honor of Coach Ash.

“We’ve talked,” Richardson said. “The first day out here, the kids got some things off their chests. If anything, it was kind of a slap in the face, ‘This is the real deal.’ There’s a lot of stuff going on, whether it’s political this or that. But our guys got to feel it firsthand that it’s a real deal. Ash wasn’t our first coach to get COVID.”

Coach Johnny Lara, within three days of contracting COVID-19, was on a ventilator. He’s 75.

“We were fully prepared that we might lose Coach Lara and he was able to survive,” Richardson said “Ash’s thing was unexpected. Shock. Disbelief. We followed all the protocols. It could happen to anybody any time, any demographic, any location. And it happened. So through this whole thing our guys never felt they were getting shafted. That made it easy because I didn’t have to try to defend anybody at the district. Our guys were, ‘This is real,’ and we need to make sure everybody is safe.”

A district-only season

It’s been tough, but the Wolverines are united now, two weeks into practices, getting ready to play their season opener on Monday against Avondale Westview in the start of the six-team Tolleson district season.

The district is not fully back to where it was pre-COVID when it comes to spring sports.

The district didn’t start with the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s season earlier this month, and it won’t  take part in the AIA state tournament in May.

Instead, each school will play each other three times, then on May 10 start a district tournament, the end of which a champion will be crowned.

It’s better than nothing, and Richardson feels grateful for the loyalty and the commitment his players have shown through all of the stops and uncertainty to get to here.

He called the first two weeks of workouts probably the best he has seen at Tolleson in the last 20 years as head coach.

“I don’t know if it was a honeymoon period or the kids realized what’s been lost, but it’s been unbelievable,” Richardson said.

“We’re still playing,” Richardson said. “We’re going to play 18 games or whatever. We’re not going to play in the state tournament. I think there’s a little bit of disappointment. But they’re like, ‘You know what, we’re getting to play.’

“We didn’t have one kid wavering about wanting to transfer. They didn’t say that one time. We have a couple of guys who are going to go to college (for baseball). They would have had that opportunity. Trust me, people have reached out, ‘If so and so wants to play …. Well, that’s nice of you.’ They all stayed.”

Last year’s team got out to a 3-4 start before it suddenly ended. Seven starters returned this year. But with just a small sample size last year, there really isn’t the experience a full season would bring.

“All those kids who came back, yeah, they’re a year older, but they’re not a year older in baseball experience,” Richardson said. “I think of all of our guys maybe six of them were involved in club ball.

“We had guys who hadn’t touched a baseball. We had some guys who worked out on their own, going to the park, or whatever.”

Urbina was fortunate to play on a club team that started in May and played until February. So it’s not like he came back starving for competition.

But it was hard seeing other school districts in the Valley going full blast in the fall and winter sports.

“It’s kind of whacked,” Urbina said. “Every other district is playing right now but us. It sucks. You have schools that we usually play on our schedule playing other teams.”

Palomino says COVID-19 put the game in perspective. He said there was month that his family went through the struggles at home of COVID, but everybody came out healthy.

“It makes you feel be grateful for what you have,” Palomino said. “We went through it with our program with our coaches. Just be grateful for what we have and take every day for what it is.”

To suggest human-interest story ideas and other news, reach Obert at [email protected] or 602-316-8827. Follow him on Twitter @azc_obert.

Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.