The baseball field at Pleasant Valley High School will be getting a new, larger scoreboard courtesy of the Ricky Finelli Memorial Fund. The new one is designed to be 8 by 20 feet with a 3-foot-wide scalloped memorial board.

Brittany Angelica, his fiancee and founder of the memorial fund, said, “I wanted something that recognized Ricky at the field.”

The new scoreboard will replace the old one, but the old one is going to be put to good use. Angelica, who is one of the high school’s field hockey coaches, said it will keep score for the field hockey games.

Superintendent Lee Lesisko said the scoreboard will be placed on the side of a building next to the baseball field where it originally hung.

“I think she’s doing a really nice job on this,” he said.

At a school board meeting in May, Lesisko formally thanked Angelica for the donation.

“On behalf of the Pleasant Valley School District and the Board of Education, I want to thank the Ricky Finelli Memorial Fund, specifically Brittany Angelica for the kind donation of $15,000,” he said.

A graduate of Pleasant Valley High School in 2010, Ricky Finelli was a football player for his alma mater, but loved watching Angelica’s nephews play Little League Baseball.

“The kids loved him,” she said. “He was like that uncle that always has candy.”

He died in a crash in July 2016 on Route 33.

Finelli was friendly, fun-loving and a jokester, she said, but he always included everyone.

“He would be very happy to know the scoreboard is going up,” Angelica said.

Next school year, one of her two nephews will be a junior at Pleasant Valley High School and will be playing baseball on that field. The other one will be in middle school, but hopes to be on the team, too, one day.

Originally, Angelica started the memorial fund to create athletic scholarships for a graduating senior each year. Since 2017, the fund has been able to provide four scholarships of between $500 and $1,000 to four athletes.

“This is one thing that we wanted to do,” she said. “We wanted to help people in the community and to let people know about him, somehow meet Ricky even though he has passed.”

The details of the scoreboard are currently being finalized with Varsity Scoreboards. When it is completed, then the company will install it in order to preserve the warranties, Lesisko said.