Girls softball team cries foul over field house | News

Tampa, Florida - A few players from the Leto High girls softball team practice. It's months before their season starts, but already they're suffering a loss. Their field house is slated for demolition.

"It's sad, because that's where I met everybody," says 17-year-old Jacklyn Amato.

For seven years the team has used a portable near the field. Parents helped fix up the place by donating comfortable couches, a TV, and a refrigerator. The students study there, change clothes and even eat team meals. For the players, the building is more than just four walls.

"It's not just a place where we hang out. It's where our family is," says player Mo Macaluso.

Parents like the set up too. "It's a sense of security for parents to know my daughter's in a room with ten other girls doing homework or waiting for their meal," says Jim Jones, who has two daughters on the team.

But the school district says the portable was meant for equipment storage and never for kids. Spokesperson Linda Cobbe says it's now being torn down because of safety concerns, possibly involving asbestos.

"I understand they have enjoyed having it, but it was never intended for that purpose," says Cobbe. "It is in violation of state requirements for those students to be using that portable." But Cobbe could not explain how that practice went on for seven years.

So where does that leave the girls? They can use rooms inside the school, a several block walk from the field, or change in a space underneath the press box being renovated as a locker room.

However, parents say that room just doesn't cut it. They say it's small, hot and in the past it's also been plagued by flooding and mold. "If that's what they're talking about, it's ridiculous to even think that," says Amy Harkins, who has a daughter on the team. "They need to come and look at it themselves and say 'put my kid in there'".

10 News would have liked to see firsthand the condition of the portable and of the proposed new locker room area, but the school district denied our repeated requests to videotape the area. We had to depend on accounts and photographs from parents and stay outside the fence.

And the Leto girls are feeling a bit left out too, especially when other schools like Jefferson High appear to be using very similar buildings as field houses. Macaluso says, "That portable is like our home away from home."