Pasadena School Board Accepts $2 Million Mamba and Mambacita Donation to Rebuild John Muir Softball Field

On Thursday evening the Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education accepted a $2 million donation from the Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation — established by Vanessa Bryant in memory of her husband, Kobe Bryant, and daughter Gianna Bryant — to replace the John Muir High School varsity softball field with a state-of-the-art synthetic turf system.

Players, coaches and parents, several of whom lost homes in the Eaton Fire of January, told the board the current field has become a safety hazard, with uneven grass, rocks and gopher holes causing repeated injuries.

The action also approved the proposed name “Kobe and Gianna Bryant Field” and initiated the formal naming process for the John Muir High School softball field. Trustee Yarma Velázquez moved approval of the consent sweep, with Trustee Scott Harden seconding.

Robert Milton, director of Alta Pasa Fast Pitch, the primary softball user group of John Muir’s south campus, told the board the program has become a feeder pipeline to all of the district’s high schools and now serves more than 700 families per year. He said the program’s older teams are nationally ranked, its younger teams have won district and state championships, and more than 82 athletes have committed to college softball programs since 2018, including 18 last year, in the months immediately after the fires. Roughly half of the program’s families, he said, including his own, lost their homes in the fire.

Milton said the John Muir softball program’s on-field results have followed a parallel arc — from four wins in 12 years to nearly 60 wins in the last four years, two playoff appearances, a California Interscholastic Federation semifinal run, and a No. 1 playoff ranking last year.

“Right now it’s just unsafe — gopher holes everywhere, injuries, broken ankles,” Milton told the board.

Sidney Sims, a freshman on the John Muir varsity softball team, told trustees the field had become “a hub or a home for our softball family.” Her family lost their home in the Eaton Fire, she said, and her teammate Brynn Connolly’s family was among those who supported them in the aftermath.

Connolly, a four-year member of the California Thunders club program, described the field’s condition from a player’s perspective: outfield ground balls deflecting off gopher holes into her face, rocks and dirt cutting her skin on diving plays, and ankles repeatedly turned on uneven grass.

Jade Mendoza, one of seven children, told trustees her family spends hours each week at the John Muir field. Her oldest sister plays on the John Muir team, another sister played for Pasadena and was on the first team to win districts as an AU player, and Mendoza and a younger sister currently play in the Pasadena Girls Softball Association program.

Julie Smith, a 1996 Olympic gold medalist and current collegiate softball coach at Pomona College who serves on the Alta Pasa Fast Pitch board, told trustees the John Muir facility is “among the most limited” she has seen for a program producing the level of talent it does. She told the board she was training a player at the field when the athlete tore her anterior cruciate ligament during a dynamic warm-up, ending her pursuit of a Division I scholarship.

Eric Jennings, an architect and vice president of design-build firm Byron Davie, addressed the board directly to describe the proposed field system.

Jennings said his firm was selected by the Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation in part because the foundation was “very concerned about the environment and those considerations.”

The project would use a product called Pivot, a polyethylene synthetic turf system with no infill, no per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, and no black crumb rubber. The material is fully recyclable, he said, with end-of-life turf mechanically broken down at a facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and reprocessed into virgin resin. He said his company removed PFAS from its manufacturing process in 2023 and uses an embedded ballast layer to mitigate surface heat. Construction would include excavation of at least 12 inches and installation of a flat drain system that filters runoff before it reaches the storm drain. Jennings said the project has an over-the-counter appointment ready with the Division of the State Architect.

Pasadena Unified Director of Facilities, Maintenance, Operations, and Transportation Michael Dunning clarified for the board that an earlier version of the proposed turf system would have used olive pits as infill, but the final Pivot system uses no infill at all.

Trustee Michelle Richardson Bailey asked Jennings whether the new material reduces the injuries — including burns — associated with older synthetic turf systems.

Jennings said modern turf fibers are designed to mimic natural grass closely enough that burns are no longer a concern, that the ballast layer reduces surface heat generated by the fibers, and that the system is supported by third-party performance testing. He told the board his firm works with athletes “from many levels, even up to the pros,” and that performance standards are written into collective bargaining agreements at the professional level.

Dr. Mimi Nartey, an environmental biologist, climate change scholar trained at Columbia University, doctorate of public health and youth sports philanthropist, told the board that real sustainability decisions must weigh water use, land constraints, infrastructure durability and the public health consequences of reduced physical activity, and that field shortages across Southern California already limit play opportunities for under-resourced children.

Not every public comment on the item offered unqualified support.

Lisa Kroese, a Pasadena Unified School District mother of three daughters, told the board she supports receiving the funds but urged trustees not to name the field after Kobe Bryant, suggesting it instead be named solely for Gianna Bryant. Cruzi said she had submitted her detailed comments by email because of the sensitive nature of her concerns.

The donation came to the district through introductions arranged by Mary Harris, special segment project manager at KNBC, who connected district leadership with Taboo (Jaime Luis Gomez) of the Black Eyed Peas, who in turn introduced them to Ken Conlan and Kat Conlin of the Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation and to Vanessa Bryant.

The speaker who described those introductions thanked Mike Dunning for working through spring break to advance the agreement, and separately thanked Superintendent Dr. Blanco for stepping into facilities duties in the absence of a chief business officer.

The naming process for “Kobe and Gianna Bryant Field” will now proceed through the formal naming process initiated by the board’s vote.