Lights at Millersville University's Cooper Park fulfills goal of Marauders' baseball coach

When Jon Shehan took over as head coach of the Millersville University baseball program prior to the 2008 season, he soon noticed a change he wanted to make — one that had nothing to do with personnel.

Cooper Park, the Marauders’ campus home for just one season to that point, featured a grandstand that supported 250 fans and a modern sound and irrigation system. But Shehan thought there was something missing.

He wanted lights, hoping to “make an already solid ballpark better.”

It took well over a decade, 15 years to be exact, for Shehan’s wish to finally come true.

“Playing home games at night is going to be special,” Shehan said last week.

Shehan — who announced the completion of the Cooper lights project via X (formerly Twitter) on June 5 — understood early on that there wasn’t a lot the university could do to add the change he desperately wanted, because the ballpark is located in the middle of Millersville, surrounded by buildings on the same street as the park.

It took the Marauders’ first run to the Division II College World Series in 2011 for the coach to create a fundraising plan.

The success put the idea of lighting Cooper in a lot of people’s minds, Shehan said. Still, it wasn’t until state Sen. Scott Martin found a way to put together a significant grant for the lights to start the process — one that was delayed a year due to back-ordered hardware, including awaiting a transformer.

When Shehan took to social media to announce the project’s completion this month, he finally fulfilled his long-held dream.

The Marauders had never hosted an NCAA regional game for the first 11 seasons of Shehan’s tenure despite consistent success because the amount of teams involved in a regional would have forced too many games for the ballpark to host without lights.

Even when the regional format was broken down ahead of the 2019 season, and Millersville finally had the ability to host playoff games — day games — Shehan still wished for the lights.

“It’s different playing in the postseason playing games at 10 or 11 a.m.,” Shehan said. “It doesn’t have a postseason feel.”

Going forward, the addition of the lights will finally provide Cooper Park with that “postseason feel.”

It should also provide enormous aid in the program’s recruiting. Local players will now be able to witness the Marauders playing night games, especially during the weekend.

There are already multiple home games for Millersville’s 2025 schedule listed with evening start times.

“Playing home games at night is going to be special,” Shehan said.

The coach said a lot of the program’s graduates have wished they were on the roster to play under the lights. That’s why, he said, the first order of business with the addition of the lights will come in the fall in the form of Millersville’s alumni game.

“I think that’ll be the first real moment,” Shehan said, “which will be pretty special.”

The Marauders are scheduled to officially begin their 2025 season on the road at Wingate in early February, but will make their home debut Feb. 22. Shehan said he expects there to be a formal dedication for the unveiling of the lights before Millersville’s first official game of the campaign.