Kinsley Construction’s Growing Impact on Delaware Athletics
When people think of Kinsley Construction, largescale warehouses and residential developments
often come to mind. In Delaware, however, our Dagsboro Site team is expanding our footprint with impactful community projects, including athletic complexes, modern schools and vital public spaces that bring people together.
Through work at places like Delaware Technical Community College’s Owens Campus, Mason Dixon Sports Complex and Sussex Technical High School, the Dagsboro crew is not only delivering high-quality site work but also positioning the team to grow in a new and diverse market.
A New Kind of Site Work
Athletic field construction requires a level of precision that goes far beyond traditional site work. While these fields may look simple once complete, the work behind them is anything but.
At Delaware Technical Community College’s (DTCC) Owens Campus, the team is relocating a baseball field as part of a larger infrastructure improvement effort tied to a nearby DelDOT intersection project with eminent domain impacts.
“This work is very detailed,” said project manager Chad Odenwelder. “The soil mixes, the sod, the angles of the pitcher’s mound—everything matters.” Junior college-level fields demand precise tolerances, often down to hundredths of an inch, with engineers closely involved throughout the process, bringing an added layer of complexity to the work.
That same attention to detail carried over to our work at Mason Dixon Sports Complex, where the team is relocating two baseball fields, constructing dugouts and batting cages, building a new multipurpose field and completing associated site improvements. This project marks a turning point for the Dagsboro crew. After observing specialty subcontractors on similar work in the past, the team recognized an opportunity to self-perform the majority of the field construction. The result was faster execution, tighter quality control and the expansion of Kinsley Construction’s in-house capabilities.
Those growing capabilities are now on full display at Sussex Technical High School, where a 145-acre site is being developed for a new 509,000-square-foot vocational high school. The campus includes baseball and softball fields, football stadiums, a turf track and field, extensive parking and new access roads—eight athletic fields in total supporting both competition and practice. It’s high school athletics at a scale more commonly associated with collegiate facilities.
How Smart Scheduling Changed the Game
Beyond technical complexity, timing has been one of the biggest challenges with athletic facilities. In addition to contractual completion dates, owners have real-world deadlines like opening day, first practice and the start of a season.
When we were awarded the Sussex Tech project in 2024, the school planned for all athletics to remain off campus until 2028. Chad and the team saw an opportunity to do better. Through close coordination, extensive schedule reworking and detailed logistical planning, the team delivered usable fields far earlier than anticipated.
Within the first year, the turf track and field were completed. A change order allowed football lines and dimensions to be added so games could be played on campus. Two practice fields were ready by fall, bringing football, soccer, field hockey and lacrosse back home years ahead of schedule.
All athletics were scheduled to be back on campus by spring 2026. Achieving this required rebuilding schedules, managing subcontractor lead times, creative access solutions like building a temporary bridge for equipment, and a massive push from the bulk earthwork team. Special recognition goes to Site foreman Kyle Young for his role in accelerating early phases, and to the field and office teams who made the logistics work.
More Than Just a Project
At the end of the day, these projects are about more than moving dirt and meeting specifications. They’re about first pitches, Friday night lights and students returning to play on their home fields. By beating timelines and delivering spaces that matter to the community, the Dagsboro team has shown that we don’t just build infrastructure, we build the places where community happens.
We’re proud to help shape the future of Delaware athletics, one field at a time.
