Local

Tulsa soccer club asking for community to help improve facilities

TULSA, Okla. — A Tulsa soccer club is asking for the community to help them improve their facilities.

The West Side Alliance (WSA) Soccer Club’s team of 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds won a national title at the end of last year. But, that team is training in poor lighting. Coaches say better lights will help the players and the community who use the facilities.

The team won the Super Y League Finals last month, but they spend a lot of time training in the dark because the lights go out.

“It’s great during the day but not so great at night,” said Eric Villaobos, age 17.

“You see the real characters come out at training when you can’t barley see,” said Brian Boyles, age 17.

“It sort of hinders, like, what we can actually do, like how we can improve ourselves,” said Christian Ojeda, age 17.

At the West Bank Sports Complex four of the 11 fields are lit. At the moment, the unlit fields have mobile diesel powered lights.

Roger Bush is the executive director of WSA. He said the situation is less than ideal.

“It’s not the best, what we’d prefer are stadium lights that come from you know above and allow for the kids to be able to see the soccer ball, track the soccer ball, be able to see each other, their team mates and the opponent, so it’s safe but it’s less than ideal,” Bush said.

Bush said they have to do a lot before practice starts just so they can see.

“They fuel the light cart, they prime the light cart, they hook the battery up to get it started and then they make sure that it’s shaped and formed towards their field the right way. They do that for two light carts because they have to have lights facing each other so you can’t have just lights from one side...and then they hope it works,” he said.

If the lights go off they have to jump start them to get them going.

Bush said they could do more to help more kids in the community with better facilities.

“I think it’s super significant to the kids that participate, and to the perspective kids that we could reach further, if we had better facilities,” he said.

They’re fundraising to get new lights.

Meanwhile, players say they’re still grateful for everything they have and hope playing in the dark makes them even better.

“It’s very hard to see sometimes but, you know, like I say we just got to keep practicing to be the best that we can be and just fight through it,” said Abraham Maravilla, age 18.

“You never know what you’re going to get but that what brings the best out of us,” said Boyles.

“It’s a bit like playing in the dark and it’s just a hinderance to us, we could do so much better if we had some lights on this field,” said Ojeda.

Caches say it’s going to cost hundreds of thousand of dollars to get the new lights. If you would like to donate, click here.

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