PHOENIX — The South Mountain Little League is completely volunteer run and makes most of its money through its snack bar.
On Saturday morning, all of their snack bar materials and inventory were stolen.
The league’s president, Cristobal Leon, found the facility ransacked as he came to get the field ready for tryouts, and immediately called Phoenix police.
“We charge a small fee to play in our league because the more kids we have the better. But unfortunately, the snack bar is what brings in most of the money and they took everything we utilized in the snack bar,” Leon said.
The thieves broke locks to get onto the property, and broke into storage spaces and the snack bar, Leon said.
“We’re all volunteers, no one in this league gets paid. We’re here because we love to donate our time and help these kids out in the league and this is just like a kick to the gut,” Leon said.
Everything from bags of game equipment to tools like riding lawn mowers, pitching machines and other items used for field maintenance were also taken.
The crooks also raided the snack bar and took items including the popcorn, snow cone and cheese machines as well as inventory.
Leon said he was last at the field near 7th Street and Southern on Wednesday and had locked everything up.
But whoever broke in didn’t just break locks. The thieves even cut out stairs, and broke windows to take more items.
“They were determined to take as many things as they could,” Leon said. “They must have really needed this stuff to come in and take it from a non-profit.”
About 45 kids showed up Saturday morning for the second round of tryouts. Practices are set to start in a couple weeks and the season starts in March.
“All we can do is continue, push along because at the end of the day we’re here for the kids,” Leon said.
The league has started GoFundMe to help get the items replaced.
