Benton Area Little League needs your help!
Tax deductible
We need your help to rebuild Little League Baseball in Benton PA!
Please read on to learn more about why we could use your support:
Our little town of Benton PA (Columbia County) has been devastated by weather conditions over the past few months. In August, we woke up to approximately a foot of rain that fell overnight and significant flash flooding that impacted our entire community. The flooding impacted both our elementary & middle/high school – our elementary gym was destroyed by the flood waters, as were approximately 6 classrooms. Every book in our MS/HS library had to be thrown out due to mold. Our HS baseball field was left with a 20 foot wide crater in centerfield, no fencing and the concession stand was found smashed in the community park.
This past Monday, April 15, 2019 at 1:30am our town was struck by an EF-2 tornado. The path of the tornado was roughly 4 miles long and went directly through Benton. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. However, the tornado left nothing but destruction in its path. Windows shattered out of homes, roofs blown off, trees tossed about and barns destroyed.
This tornado completely destroyed our Little League facilities and everything we have worked so hard to build for our players. It wiped out our concession stand and equipment shed, it tossed our equipment into the neighboring field, blew apart our dugouts, knocked over our newly installed scoreboard, broke the supports for our batting cage and knocked down and bent the fencing on all three ball fields.
As I have mentioned, Benton is a small community in Columbia County. To give you a sense of our size - our public school has roughly 900 children from grades K-12, our median household income is roughly $45,000.
Small town values are upheld in this area and as parents we know how important it is to get our children involved in sports. Baseball is sometimes their first introduction into what it means to be part of a team, to learn that when we all pull together great and amazing things can happen!
A few of us have spent every night this week at the fields tearing down the broken dugouts, removing the concession stand, throwing away the food that was just placed in it for opening ceremonies last Saturday, picking up our smashed picnic tables, dragging debris out of the neighboring fields and trying to pull the fence back into place. We are doing all this in the hopes that we can at least make the fields safe and playable for our children to continue their baseball season. If we can at least make it safe, we can focus on the big stuff over the summer and into the fall.
When we are talking about rebuilding the fields, we mean everything:
*our concession stand
*replace the roof and straighten out the sides on the equipment shed
*rebuild our dugouts
*replace the fencing that truly needs to be replaced
We aren’t looking to turn it into anything spectacular, we simply want to get it back to where it was. We will be more than thankful for any and all support we get.
Over the past 8 years our Booster Club has been working to put lights on our major field. Through hard work, we were able to purchase those lights last year. Luckily they were not yet placed in the ground. The children have been so excited and can’t wait to play under them and have their names announced! However, all of that is now on hold due to having to replace all that was lost.
Think back to when you were a child, the joy you had and how you felt like a ‘big-leaguer’ when they announced your name over the loud speaker as you came up to bat with those lights shining down on you, man…you were famous! In your mind, you were batting clean-up for the Phillies and were just hoping for that grand slam to put your team on top!!
Our players are devastated. Several of our players were in tears when they saw the destruction. All they could say was ‘ this is where it all started for me and now it’s all gone’. These emotions were echoed by so many that have played on these fields. It was devastating, absolutely heart wrenching, when we pulled into the fields on Monday morning and saw the conditions.
Please read on to learn more about why we could use your support:
Our little town of Benton PA (Columbia County) has been devastated by weather conditions over the past few months. In August, we woke up to approximately a foot of rain that fell overnight and significant flash flooding that impacted our entire community. The flooding impacted both our elementary & middle/high school – our elementary gym was destroyed by the flood waters, as were approximately 6 classrooms. Every book in our MS/HS library had to be thrown out due to mold. Our HS baseball field was left with a 20 foot wide crater in centerfield, no fencing and the concession stand was found smashed in the community park.
This past Monday, April 15, 2019 at 1:30am our town was struck by an EF-2 tornado. The path of the tornado was roughly 4 miles long and went directly through Benton. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. However, the tornado left nothing but destruction in its path. Windows shattered out of homes, roofs blown off, trees tossed about and barns destroyed.
This tornado completely destroyed our Little League facilities and everything we have worked so hard to build for our players. It wiped out our concession stand and equipment shed, it tossed our equipment into the neighboring field, blew apart our dugouts, knocked over our newly installed scoreboard, broke the supports for our batting cage and knocked down and bent the fencing on all three ball fields.
As I have mentioned, Benton is a small community in Columbia County. To give you a sense of our size - our public school has roughly 900 children from grades K-12, our median household income is roughly $45,000.
Small town values are upheld in this area and as parents we know how important it is to get our children involved in sports. Baseball is sometimes their first introduction into what it means to be part of a team, to learn that when we all pull together great and amazing things can happen!
A few of us have spent every night this week at the fields tearing down the broken dugouts, removing the concession stand, throwing away the food that was just placed in it for opening ceremonies last Saturday, picking up our smashed picnic tables, dragging debris out of the neighboring fields and trying to pull the fence back into place. We are doing all this in the hopes that we can at least make the fields safe and playable for our children to continue their baseball season. If we can at least make it safe, we can focus on the big stuff over the summer and into the fall.
When we are talking about rebuilding the fields, we mean everything:
*our concession stand
*replace the roof and straighten out the sides on the equipment shed
*rebuild our dugouts
*replace the fencing that truly needs to be replaced
We aren’t looking to turn it into anything spectacular, we simply want to get it back to where it was. We will be more than thankful for any and all support we get.
Over the past 8 years our Booster Club has been working to put lights on our major field. Through hard work, we were able to purchase those lights last year. Luckily they were not yet placed in the ground. The children have been so excited and can’t wait to play under them and have their names announced! However, all of that is now on hold due to having to replace all that was lost.
Think back to when you were a child, the joy you had and how you felt like a ‘big-leaguer’ when they announced your name over the loud speaker as you came up to bat with those lights shining down on you, man…you were famous! In your mind, you were batting clean-up for the Phillies and were just hoping for that grand slam to put your team on top!!
Our players are devastated. Several of our players were in tears when they saw the destruction. All they could say was ‘ this is where it all started for me and now it’s all gone’. These emotions were echoed by so many that have played on these fields. It was devastating, absolutely heart wrenching, when we pulled into the fields on Monday morning and saw the conditions.
Organizer
Pamela Yost
Organizer
Benton, PA
Little League Baseball Inc (2381308 Benton Area Ll)
Registered nonprofit
Donations are typically 100% tax deductible in the US.
