Column: When will The Yard become The Yards?

With the 2017-2018 sports season coming to an end at Yoe High, I want to dive into a topic that I feel is extremely important for the future of this community we call home. That would be The Yards of Cameron.

Currently, this facility has two main attractions to offer. 1. A premier field for high school playoffs games. 2. A farmers market.

Over the past several weeks, Cameron has managed to host a large number of playoff series at the high school field. In addition, there have been weekly farmers market events held at the 44 Farms pavilion. Those two are great additions for the community, but that is just simply scratching the surface of what we’re looking at.

The next phase of the project includes two more all-turf baseball fields. Once that is complete, you are going to be able to draw the select ball traffic. Where do you think that College Station, Waco and Austin would like to meet up? How about Dallas, Houston and San Antonio? The answer is Cameron, simply because it’s a neutral location.

The next phase would be to build three high school level softball fields. Just like baseball, there are thousands upon thousands of girls that go out on the weekends to compete in select softball leagues, so the demand is there.

Diving in deeper, I also believe it would be very wise to look at the younger groups. More kids are involved at younger ages, and it would be very cost-effective to put up those smaller fields. Also, don’t overlook indoor facilities, where you can attract volleyball, cheerleading and basketball events. Remember, eight and nine year-olds do not travel alone. They tend to bring along parents, siblings and grandparents.

Ask yourself this question - Have you ever traveled somewhere to watch your son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter or just someone you knew compete in a sporting event?

All you have to do is look at Round Rock, which has pegged themselves as the “Sports Capital of Texas”. At times, that venue, which now has 20 baseball fields and 5 softball fields, will host 100 teams on a given weekend. It’s not a coincidence that Round Rock is about to have the countries largest indoor water park, which will cost $350 million dollars, next to the facility.

Just as I was typing this column on Monday, there was a story that came across KWTX headlined “Youth and competitive sports driving Waco’s economy”. The story essentially stated that Central Texas was the place to go for these types of sporting events because it’s a great area for all of these teams to meet up. It’s time for Cameron to get a piece of that pie.

Yes, to get there this is going to take money. But, you have to look at the potential gain for the

community. This will not only bring in new business to the area, which in turn will create new jobs, but it will also help boost our local businesses.

I don’t believe sitting back and waiting for something to happen is the answer. I encourage anyone out there reading this article to really think about how this could be a game changer for the community. Get involved in any way that you can. I have personally donated to this project because I have been to enough of these types of tournaments to understand what type of impact it can have on a local economy.

When the bond was passed a few years ago to build the initial field, I said the time for change was now. The buy in was there then, and we must now continue to push forward.