For ground crew, it was the ‘worst’ situation
As head groundskeeper at the Pony League World Series, Levi Bristor said he and his crew of more than a dozen were “prepared for the worst.”
Bristor and his crew got just that Monday morning when torrential rain hit Lew Hays Pony Field and caused a delay of 5 hours and 25 minutes during the Pony League World Series elimination game between Navojoa, Mexico and Paderborn, Germany.
The rain fell with so much volume that it left the playing field under water in large spots.
“The water in the outfield was over my boots,” Bristor explained. “The ground crew here takes pride in making the field look beautiful.”
When the rain stopped falling, the field was beautiful, if you are a duck.
“We knew there was a cell coming and were hoping that it would split and go north and to the south,” Bristor said.
Play was stopped at 11:05 a.m.
The Pony ground crew went to work, along with some determined volunteers. Together they battled almost insurmountable odds but made the field playable.
At one point, there were 31 crew members working on restoring the field to playable condition.
“At 1:30, you couldn’t see the baselines,” Bristor said. “They were all under water.
“With the ground crew and the volunteers – it’s amazing the community can get together like this – we were able to get this done. We had two dads from the Washington County team bring backpack blowers to the park. We had a girl who was the Pony Princess two years ago and was here just to watch. She saw that we needed help and she joined us. We had a girl with a broken leg who wrapped her cast with a plastic bag and helped.”
The scoreboard operator even went home and retrieved a sump pump that was used to get the water out of left field.
The crew put down 133 large bags of drying agent. A hole was dug in left field to drain the stranding water. Blowers were used on the infield and outfield.
By 4:30 p.m., the diamond was deemed playable.