The Texas Rangers Foundation has awarded a grant to the Valley Mills baseball complex to aid in their recovery from flood damage.
Back in May severe flooding at the Valley Mills Youth Complex caused thousands of dollars worth of destruction, with flood waters getting as high as roughly five to six feet.
Justin Owens, the Vice President of their baseball association, says everything was ruined and they ended up losing most of their equipment.
After seeing the damage their association had no idea when or how they might come back from this.
According to Owens, their community did what they could. “The First National Bank of Bosque County gave us a pretty good donation, other people in the community have stepped up too donation-wise,” he said.
But even with all of those donations and insurance, it still wouldn’t cover everything.
To their surprise the Texas Rangers Foundation heard about what happened.
“They reached out to us about how they could help with that and they’ve been more than… they’ve helped us a lot,” Owens shared.
They ended up donating $10,000 to the association. Karin Morris, the Executive Director of the foundation, says they never hesitate when it comes to helping local baseball programs.
“We know that providing resources that offset some of those expenses, then they can go use those funds instead for giving additional kids an opportunity to play or, in this case, fixing the fields that were flooded,” Morris said.
Then, just a few months later, they further surprised the association by awarding them a grant for two new scoreboards, which they had applied for before the flood.
“When Dustin, our fundraiser committee, he told us ‘hey we received the grant’ we were like really? You know like we really got that, we didn’t expect to,” Owens shared.
But according to Morris, it was an easy choice for the foundation… presenting them with the grant at last Sunday’s rangers game.
“So luckily we’re going to replace two fields with two brand new scoreboards,” Owens said. And to the Texas Rangers Foundation, that’s what this is all about.
“We don’t have baseball fans if there’s not little kids playing baseball, you know we don’t have potential baseball rangers players if there’s not opportunities being given to young people to kind of create those dreams and create those memories,” Morris shared, “so honoring those organizations that provide those funds and resources is important to us”.
Thanks to this grant, lots of donations, and help from their local community they’ve been able to repair or replace pretty much everything they lost quicker than they thought possible.
“We have two fields that are ready to… have been played on, and working on a third one now,” Owens said, “We’re a month out from having that completely done and then you know the scoreboards set up with it, so it’ll be done by January first or so, we’ll be ready to go for the next year”.
