FORT MYERS, Fla. — With the spring baseball season just around the corner and after no fall baseball due to Hurricane Ian, teams have been looking forward to getting back into the swing of things.
After stadium-style lights fell onto the field in Estero Park on Monday, Lee County shut down access to all practice fields, leaving teams in the dark.
Howard Gold, who is the President of South Fort Myers Youth Baseball felt a wave of emotion when talking about the delay of games. "These kids have had two years of COVID-19, then a hurricane and now they're looking at losing another season. We just felt like we had to make every effort to have a season."
Gold had jumped into action after Lee County shut down the athletic fields after the stadium-style lights collapsed. He adds, "I just got on the phone and made a few calls because I honestly felt like it would have been the death of youth sports in this county."
Gold said with the teams still rebuilding, a season wouldn't have been possible without the help of volunteers. They had to purchase a score board, had steel columns and concrete donated and put most of it together themselves to at least be functional.
A spokesperson from the city tells Fox 4's Yvette Sanchez, "All locations with scheduled league games will be safe to resume play on Saturday." Howard Gold is making sure this upcoming season is a home run. "You know... you win some, you lose some, but you play as a team."
Stacey Barrientos and her son are ready to start the Spring season after no fall ball, " To hear that we were able to start practicing so quickly and not even skip a beat was pretty amazing, we were all really excited," Barrientos told me as her son practiced.
Even though practice has started, Barriento hopes that the county can fix the lights quickly, " So that we could have more practices during the week, to be able to have as many practices and games that we need to without having the light be an issue."
A great way to start off the season; still standing and stronger together. Starting Saturday, the major teams will be holding their practices.
Opening day for The South Fort Myers Youth Baseball League is February, 11.
