I have been involved with the Baseball Booster Board all four years my son has been a student as well as baseball player at one of our four awesome campuses here in Amarillo.  We have been trying to get turf for our baseball and softball fields in our district for a few years now as well as a few other things fixed and well the AISD board was finally supposed to vote for the turf last September. I along with a few other booster representatives spoke at that board meeting and even though we had a strong case they still had a 4-3 vote to delay the decision until this month’s meeting on March 23rd.  Our districts board members that voted against this issue served an extreme disservice to our district’s baseball and softball programs that night by "tabling" the need for turfing our baseball and softball fields for another 6 months. I, personally, felt as if they thought it was more a want than a need. Now our programs will once again have to go a whole another year with below mediocre facilities and extreme safety issues even though every other sport in the district has a superior playing surface for their program to play their sports. The baseball and softball programs have been neglected for 20 years yet they still can't justify updating and fix them?! Even though they have the money to do so???? They also barely talked about the fact that we need lighting at our fields and didn’t even bring up the other safety issues we have at our field have as reasons to fix them. Just numbers rambled off and the responses of "Without this or that in front of us, this could be more money, and this could be more money." They all knew of this meeting and this topic being on the agenda. Every other person talking about money/budget and this or that was prepared yet for some reason the district "hadn't received" a soil report and that was the one thing that it seemed like the board members wanted to see to make an informative cost decision back in September. How is that possible when they knew of this meeting for months? It's like they purposely didn’t get it/bring it so it would look like they could not make a knowledgeable decision and "had" table it again. Once again, pushing the baseball and softball programs to the side.

As I stated that night, the cost of what it takes to maintain our field currently is very high and I’m sure it’s almost the same across the town no matter what school your child goes to. Even though my son is a senior this year, I am still willing to continue to fight this fight for all the boys and girls that will be coming through our high schools in future years. Our booster club has spent well over $15,000 on quality dirt in the last two years alone and that's not including the $6,000-$8,000 that they were looking at having to spend this year.  This is and will be an ongoing cost every year that our school must pay without the help from Amarillo ISD. Every time it rains or if there is a problem with the watering system our baseball field floods and we are left with having to rent pumping machines as well as purchasing drying agent (again without any help from the district on paying for it or even doing the work) in order to even hope to get our field even dry enough to play our own district home games by start time. If we can’t get them dry enough, we are sent to our opposing teams’ field or to another field altogether where we lose any home field advantage, parent involvement as well as any form of profit from our concession stand.  If we had turf that would be $9000 +/- a year (annual cost of quality dirt and pump rentals) that we could put towards the other necessary needs that our boys need.

All we are asking is for extracurricular sports program equality and to get our facilities to acceptable standards even with our other schools sports programs. How is having our baseball and softballs booster clubs paying for everything just so we can play equality when the other school programs do not have to pay to get Dick Bivins up to par every week or each of the schools gymnasiums waxed and prepped before the big game?  I ask that if you have a stake in the baseball or softball world now or even in the future in that you please sign this and come to the next meeting on March 23, 2020 at 5:30 pm and voice your thoughts about the much needed need of these updates as they are needed at all 4 of our high schools. Your boys or girls will be here in high school before you know it and they all deserve to have an updated playing facility, be safe while they play the sport they love and be proud of where they are able to play just like all the other schools sports.  We need ALL of your support NOW because if not now this will most likely get 'tabled' again or not even passed at all!! I'm trying to help all 4 schools not just one! So help me call on the Amarillo Independent School District to improve the safety and quality of our baseball and softball fields TODAY!