Flood-damaged park in Rogersville celebrates Opening Day on time
Rice Energy workers carry gravel while working recently to repair the park in Rogersville after heavy flooding damaged it in December.
Lady Pioneers softball players, from back to front, Shelby Morris, Mackenzie Carpenter, Brittany Bonnema, Linzee Stover and Jade Renner celebrate their first junior varsity and varsity wins of the season March 29 at Rice Energy Park in Rogersville after heavy flooding in December damaged the park.
While getting ready for opening day recently, first-grader Zack Ashcroft paints alongside Rice Energy co-owner Derek Rice, while his dad, Steve Ashcroft, paints from a bucket truck.
An aerial view provided by Rice Energy shows recent flooding that damaged the park in Rogersville.
An aerial view provided by Rice Energy shows recent flooding that damaged the park in Rogersville.
ROGERSVILLE – Baseball and softball season have just begun and the community park in Rogersville that was nearly destroyed by record flooding in December is now blooming again with fresh paint, three refurbished ball fields and a brand new name – Rice Energy Park.
Opening day was delayed by – what else? – rain, but the next day, March 29, found the place packed with grateful parents and neighbors, some wearing Rice Energy T-shirts, happy to cheer their West Greene Lady Pioneers on to their first varsity and junior varsity wins of the year against California.
Everybody here remembered what Center Township Community Park looked like three months ago when the lower fork of Ten Mile Creek rose more than three feet in a few short hours Dec. 18 and flooded everything.
“They were the highest waters we’d ever seen,” Center Township Supervisor Tim Cook said.
And so was the cost of repairs. Ball field fences were bent and the special infield soil mix that is so costly to replace had been washed away on all three fields. Little League uniforms and equipment stored in the field house were ruined and the concession stand equipment was beyond repair.
Kelly Kiger, president of the West Greene Youth Baseball remembers feeling overwhelmed with the prospects of spending $12,000 to replace Little League gear and the quotes for resurfacing the infields approaching $20,000.
“We had no idea where we’re going to pull together that much money to make the repairs needed to start the season,” Kiger said. “These are the only fields our kids have.”
The youth league parents went to the Center Township supervisors to ask for help. The help they got was a field of dreams come true in a partnership among the supervisors, the school district and Rice Energy, a natural gas and oil company that now has more than 30 active well pads in Greene County, most of them in West Greene.
Rice Energy hires 90 percent of its workforce from the region where it does business in and is always on the lookout for community projects that need done, co-owner and geologist Derek Rice said.
“Our community relations side is as big as our fracking side,” he said. “Greene County is our focus now and we believe in giving back to the people we partner with.”
Center Township resident Kurt Katchmark helped to negotiate the first Rice lease of his family and surrounding neighbors’ properties near Hargus Creek in 2011, and is now general manager of local operations. After the flood, he met with parents and took their plight to his bosses.
“The brothers felt it was a valuable cause. The supervisors wrote up a proposal at the February meeting and made a list of what we needed and submitted it,” Katchmark said.
League parents, ball teams, booster clubs and supervisors didn’t wait for a reply. Taking advantage of the warm weather in February, they staged a two-day cleanup, power-washed buildings and moved debris, but “a week later it flooded again and we were back to square one,” Katchmark said of the subsequent March 1 flood.
Rice Energy came to the rescue March 14, committing $75,000 to restore and improve the park and its ball fields, along with giving the employee hours it would take to get the job done before opening day. Four days later, an all-star lineup of neighborhood volunteers and local businesses joined the Rice team and worked nonstop for the next two Saturdays and some days in between to scrub, shovel, dump, move and paint everything in sight.
On March 25, the sun was shining as Rice employee Chrissy Day dipped her paint brush in blue paint donated by Sherwin Williams and added a finishing coat to the cement brick wall of the freshly power-washed Little League field house.
Around her were scores of volunteers, including co-owner Derek Rice, busy painting either on the ground or up in the bucket truck to get every last bit of trim. Other volunteers included friends, neighbors and local businesses like Bill Wise Excavating that were there to bring skid loaders, bucket trucks and plenty of sweats equity to the job of restoring the park where generations of their families have played ball.
“I live in Allegheny County, but I’m from here so it’s fun seeing people I went to school with,” Day said. “Every West Greene opportunity I see I jump on it.”
It seems the blue and gold corporate flame of Rice Energy matches nicely with the blue and gold school colors of West Greene.
“Last week there must have been a hundred people here and it was cold and rainy,” Katchmark said. “The best thing is, this is not costing the taxpayers of Center Township anything. Rice Energy really stepped up to the plate.