Staff report

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — The East Rowan 12U baseball team traveled to the 2018 Top Gun Southeastern “World Series” last weekend, winning its division championship.

East Rowan played teams from both North and South Carolina at the phenomenal Shipyard Park, located on the banks of the Wando River.

“It was an incredible experience for the boys,” said team spokesman Heather Sparger Dyer. “Our team played really well and won their division.”

Shipyard Park serves the local, state and regional youth baseball communities need for a high quality regional and national tournament venue. The 20-acre Shipyard Park Complex includes a 17,500-square foot, climate-controlled training facility with batting cages, basketball and volleyball capabilities. The fields are multi-sports capable, but mostly geared towards baseball. The five-field configuration includes two full-
size collegiate diamonds and three youth-size fields — all constructed with Astro Turf as the playing surface. Four of the stadiums have covered grandstands and raised press boxes, plus a riverfront walking path.
Shipyard Park was formally known as Detyens Shipyards. Built in the early 1960s by Bill Detyens, the Shipyards repaired and maintained ocean-going vessels. The Shipyard site was shuttered in 2006 and all ship repair operations and assets where consolidated to the Detyens Shipyards Cooper River site in North Charleston.

Detyens’ grandson, Loy Stewart, Jr., a third-generation owner-operator
of Detyens Shipyards didn’t want the Wando River property sold to real estate
developers and thought that the property had a larger destiny than just becoming condos or a marina.

“We wanted to do something with our land that would affect kids long after we are dead and gone, so we dreamed up Shipyard Park,” explained Stewart. “We, and when I say we, I mean my entire family and our Detyens Shipyards family of employees, felt that by building Shipyard Park, we were giving back to our local, state and regional communities and by not selling out, we really can affect real change in youth sports development.”