Operation Love and hope to rebuild youth baseball and softball fields destroyed by Tropical storm helene

Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
October 21, 2024

A cause for celebration was not immediately visible to the naked eye on the morning of Oct. 20, when nearly two dozen people gathered to survey the damage around the Town of Black Mountain’s Veterans Park, three weeks after Tropical Storm Helene devastated the region. The complex, which features four baseball and softball fields that are home to the Charles D. Owen Babe Ruth League, remained in shambles, well after the waters of the nearby Swannanoa River receded.

What emerged from the piles of mangled metal and sediment-covered base paths, however, was a plan, spearheaded by a generous team of volunteers, intended to keep Swannanoa Valley children playing the game they love.

Nearly 400 athletes, ranging from ages 3 to 12, participated in the Owen Babe Ruth League’s fall season, which was interrupted abruptly by the natural disaster that displaced an unknown number of local residents and claimed the lives of at least 42 people in Buncombe County. Veterans Park, which has hosted youth baseball and softball for 30 years, was destroyed by flooding.

While the final two weeks of the league’s season were suspended due to the disaster, the goal of Operation Love and Hope, according to BioSaphe CEO Don Clark and his team of sports field managers, is to have two new fields in operation by the end of November.

“We’ve raised $350,000 already for this effort,” said the Houston-based entrepreneur coordinating the initiative. “We have some amazing people involved in this project.”

The group, he added, intends to complete the first phase of the project by Thanksgiving.

“We didn’t want you all to go into the holidays feeling like you’ve been in this fight all by yourselves,” Clark said. “This is something we want to be a gift for the holidays. We want to cook dinner the Sunday before Thanksgiving and have people come out, eat, and feel some support and encouragement going into the holiday season.”

A chance meeting over coffee

Nate Fiore was fulfilling the final days of his contract with the groundskeeping crew of the Winston-Salem Dash, the Minor League Baseball single A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, as Helene moved through the mountains of Western N.C.

“I decided I wanted to get into one of the hardest hit areas and use my body to do some of the grunt work,” said Fiore, who has been mucking damaged homes in Swannanoa for 18 days.

With Clark and his former boss, Dash Head Groundskeeper Matt Bergin, eager to assist with a team of Sports Field Management Association professionals, Fiore’s encounter with a local family was the genesis of an idea. Navigating a new landscape in the days after a natural disaster, he arrived at the driveway of Owen Babe Ruth Softball Director Josh Parker.

“I stopped there because Josh’s wife was making coffee, and I was trying to find the Beacon area,” Fiore said. “We were sharing our stories, like everyone is doing, and he told me about his role with the league, what happened here at the park and some of the decisions he is struggling with, as far as possibly not being able to play baseball or softball in the community anymore.”

A lifelong baseball player, Fiore was dismayed with the prospect that hundreds of children in the Swannanoa Valley could be left without a facility on which to practice and host games.

“Nate called me, a week ago today, and said, ‘what about building a baseball and softball field?’” Clark said. “At first I was hesitant, because this storm had impacted so many people in the worst ways, but then he told me the story of this field and the community that uses it.”

Clark connected with Parker, who shared his concerns for future generations of local athletes.

“I told him we can handle anything that’s thrown at us,” the Swannanoa Valley native said. “In fact, we have, but, the kids here caught a bum rap. My daughter is 8, and this is tough for her; there is no more normal.”

The emotional perspective of a parent in the middle of a series of crises resonated with Clark.

“We’re all dealing with adult things, but having these poor kids getting stuck with that daily breaks my heart,” he said. Clark’s contact within the field management community netted immediate results. “By Tuesday (Oct. 15), we had $250,000 of sod donated, and two of the best field building groups in the country coming.”

Offering $100,000 in in-kind donations, according to Clark, is SCG Fields, which has constructed nearly 700 fields, including those of the Kansas City Royals, New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies and other Major League Baseball organizations, and Precision Turf, which has completed work for the University of Alabama, University of North Carolina, and Clemson University.

“We’re not going to treat this like a youth league field,” Clark said. “We’re going to build the best damn youth league field. That’s my commitment.”

‘Connections and miracles’

The past three weeks have been a blur for Black Mountain Town Manager Josh Harrold, as Helene knocked out critical services throughout the municipality, which remains in a declared state of emergency. The town is continuing to assess the widespread damage within its boundaries.

The 27-acre park, which borders the Swannanoa River, has been owned by the Town of Black Mountain since 1991 and is among the town’s most widely used assets. The bordering river reached a flood stage of 26 feet during the storm, washing away a bridge that connects the property to The Oaks Trail and scattering sheds and debris across the landscape.

“We had made a lot of progress here over the past few years, and things were going really well,” Harrold said. “We want to get that back, and would love to see it better than it was before.”

While the recovery process has been arduous, the town manager’s spirit was lifted when he was informed of Operation Love and Hope’s offer.

“This is day 23, and it’s kind of how this whole thing has been, just a series of connections and miracles,” Harrold said. “There have been things that happened that I still don’t know if I believe, but yet they actually happened. Things like this are amazing, and it’s a big part of the kind of support we really need here.”

Owen Babe Ruth League Commissioner Clint Creasman, a native of Swannanoa who helped build the current fields, struggled to process what the destruction of the complex could mean for local children.

“This place is a huge part of this community,” he said. “There aren’t any other fields left in this community, and how do you tell 400 kids they don’t have anywhere to play anymore? If this isn’t here, you have to go to Asheville to play ball.”

Let kids be kids

The impact of Helene’s wrath is certain to be felt for years to come, as communities throughout WNC grapple with repairing decimated infrastructure. As many of the adults gathered at Veterans Park continue to clean up after the flood, their children struggle to fully understand the scope of the catastrophe.

“Kids are already so wrapped up in all of these grown up issues, even as they deal with everything they’ve just been through,” Clark said. “We need to give them an outlet, for their emotional, physical and mental health.”

Operation Love and Hope addresses a need shared by hundreds of families in Black Mountain and Swannanoa, according to Fiore.

“This is heartbreaking, as someone who grew up playing baseball,” he said. “You need your staples in a community, and youth sports is definitely one of them.”

A coordinated effort to restore the fields washed away by the flood is the kind of opportunity Asheville Tourists Sports Turf Manager Joey Elmore has been looking for since he began assisting with relief efforts in the area weeks ago.

“A couple of guys I know reached out to me, because this is a pretty small network,” he said. “But, we all know each other pretty well, and it’s a caring group. I’ve had guys from sports field management organizations in N.C., S.C., Virginia and other places contacting me and asking how they can help. This project is a great place to start.”

Organizers of the grassroots effort are hoping to raise additional funding to complete the work in Black Mountain, and throughout the region.

“Ultimately, we would like to see folks jump in and get involved in a way that will allow us to build something great here, and then do similar projects in other communities that have been impacted by this storm,” Clark said. “We want this to be something special, and a place that kids feel that hope for the future when they come to play.”

Anyone interested in supporting Operation Love and Hope is asked to contact Fiore at nathanfiore444@gmail.com.

“This is going to be a long process and the people here have already experienced so much,” Clark said. “If kids are happy, it puts parents at ease, and we want to help take some of that extra burden off families.”

Photos of damage at Veterans Park from Tropical Storm Helene can be viewed in the gallery below.

Transforming the Swannanoa Valley's nightmare scenario into a field of dreams

Operation Love and hope to rebuild youth baseball and softball fields destroyed by Tropical storm helene

A chance meeting over coffee

‘Connections and miracles’

Let kids be kids