Oklahoma Baseball Breaks Ground on the Next Chapter at Kimrey

Oklahoma baseball just won a national title, and the program is already moving on to the next thing.

The university announced Wednesday that the groundbreaking for Project 2 of the Kimrey Family Stadium Project is happening Friday at 4:30 p.m. on the southwest lawn inside the stadium. Free event. Open to the public. First-come, first-served if you want a decent place to stand or sit. This is the official start of the second phase of a pretty big upgrade to the home of Sooner baseball.

A couple of logistics notes if you plan on going. Because of football weekend and RV parking at Lloyd Noble for Saturday, baseball parking is going to be across the street in the northeast part of the LNC lot. From there you walk west on Imhoff Road to the main gate. Gates open at 4, so get there early if you do not want to be stuck in the back.

The actual ceremony should have a little weight to it. President Joseph Harroz, AD Roger Denny, Skip Johnson, and junior second baseman Kyle Branch are all expected to speak. That is a solid group for something like this. You get the people writing the checks and running the department, the coach who just delivered a championship, and a player still in the middle of all of it. The whole thing is supposed to run from about 4:30 to 5:15.

What they are kicking off is the bigger half of a $49 million renovation and expansion. Project 2 covers a lot of ground. Team facilities get improved. The seating bowl gets upgraded. Fans get better stuff too, including new concessions, restrooms, and a fan plaza. So this is not just a project the players will notice in the locker room. It is supposed to make game days better as well.

The main attraction is the Toby Keith Family Performance Center. That is the indoor facility designed for training, player development, sports performance, and all the behind-the-scenes work that actually decides whether a roster holds up over a long season. Naming it after Toby Keith is pure Oklahoma. A major gift from the Covel family is helping make it happen.

For a baseball program that just won a title without sitting on the sport’s biggest pile of money, this is a smart next step. Keep the culture. Improve the building.

It is not getting finished tomorrow. The student-athlete areas, including the Toby Keith Family Performance Center, are scheduled for spring 2028. So the current guys will watch it go up around them, and the next groups through the program will be the ones who really live in it. Project 1 already got done before the 2026 season, with upgrades to the outfield wall, batter’s eye, bullpens, exterior fence, and the areas beyond the outfield. This is phase two of something that has already started.

Also worth saying out loud: none of this is coming from state money or student tuition and fees. It is donor-funded. That is how these projects get done, and after the year Oklahoma baseball just had, the ask probably lands a little better than it would have a couple seasons ago.

Friday is not the finished product. It is just the start of the next chapter.

For a program coming off a championship and still trying to stay in the fight with the sport’s heavier spenders, that still counts.

Kimrey is getting better. The Sooners are not treating the title like the end of the story.