Randy Custis Memorial Park

SPRING 2025 CAPITAL GRANT: Lighting for Soccer Fields
Grant Amount: $40,000

Reach: Over 550 soccer players (recreational youth, travel athletes, and Eastern Shore Community College student-athletes) across Northampton and Accomack counties.

Project: ESVCF funding supported the installation of a professional Musco LED lighting system at Randy Custis Memorial Park in Nassawadox, Virginia, making it the first lit soccer field on the 70-mile stretch of Virginia's Eastern Shore. The new lights serve the collegiate-regulation-size soccer field and adjoining practice fields, enabling evening practices and games for the first time in the park's history.

Impact: With the lights now operational, approximately 400 recreational players across six age groups in Shore Soccer League can extend their practice hours into the evening, and over 100 Shore FC travel players can lengthen their season well past daylight-saving time. Perhaps most significantly, the Eastern Shore Community College men's and women's soccer teams now have a lit home field for their inaugural competitive season. This is a milestone for student-athletes who often balance classes and part-time jobs during the day. For these young people, whose community has a 40% child poverty rate and where 76% of public-school students qualify for free and reduced lunch, evening field access is transformative. The park is also now positioned to host its first nighttime tournament, bringing sports tourism to Northampton County for the first time.

Why It Matters: For years, coaches and parents on the Eastern Shore made do — running generators to the sideline, lining up cars to cast headlights across the field — just to squeeze in a few more minutes of practice. This grant turned those workarounds into history. For the hundreds of young athletes who call Randy Custis Memorial Park home, the lights represent something far greater than a facility upgrade: they signal that their community finally has what so many others take for granted — a place to play, long after the sun goes down.