Little league needs help repairing flood-ravaged field

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- An Alief-area little league needs help. Their field has been under water since the Tax Day floods. Now that the water has receded, a new effort is under way to get their field of dreams back.

About 200 kids, from four to 15 years old, play for West Oaks Little League. Their fields are in George Bush Park, which is designated as a reservoir.

"It's been boring because I haven't been playing baseball. And it's my passion," says 10-year-old Steven Bonica.

The Tax Day floods happened just two weeks after Opening Day for spring season. It practically wiped the season out.

"I go home after school when there was school and we didn't play," says Sebastian Abreu. "I would just throw at a wall, practice even though we didn't have games or nothing."

On Monday, the adults who run the league were finally able to get in to see how much damage the flood left behind.

"Obviously this is a big sacrifice for the county to hold the water here, but at the same time the timing has been difficult for us because it hit us right in the beginning of the season," says parent and board member Norma Bonica.

All the food in their freshly stocked concession stand is gone, and that's just the beginning.

"All of our riding lawnmowers have been completely submerged in water," Bonica says.

She says everything will likely need to be replaced: bleachers, equipment, appliances, scoreboards -- even the fields.

"The dirt is not cheap. The clay is not cheap. And all that has been washed off," Bonica says.

For many families that play for West Oaks, the fields are like a second home. But those fields of dreams are more like fields of nightmares right now. Grass has replaced the clay on the diamond and the damage just keeps going.

They don't know how much it's going cost to get everything fixed. But what they do know is that they're a very working class little league. And unlike some of their little league neighbors, they don't have the option to just drop thousands of dollars of their own money.

"We're asking for businesses to help out in the form of monetary," says Bonica. "We're also asking businesses to help out in the form of sending their employees when they provide community service because we're going to need both."

They're hoping for a miracle, to get the fields ready in time for the fall season. That would mean being done by the end of August. The board hasn't put a dollar amount on what they need because they hope to salvage something. If you'd like to help, check out the link to their league. It has a list of everything they plan to replace, and a link to their GoFundMe page.