A trailer worth $3,000, one pitching machine priced at $2,000 and another at $1,250, 144 practice balls worth $720, two sets of bases valued at $460, a field chalker that cost $350, and an array of other softball gear from anchor base plugs ($25) to an Easton Synergy bat ($250).
All of it gone — up in flames, in a fire set Halloween night on a high school campus in the dead center of town.
The 4 a.m. fire on Nov. 1 at Hardaway High School left the Lady Hawks softball team about $12,000 short of hard-earned playing equipment and field-maintenance gear, supplies that took years to accumulate.7
Now the team and its booster club wonder why an arsonist targeted them, and how they’re going to replace all that was lost.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said team treasurer Laura Moseley, whose 14-year-old daughter, Kari Kinser, is a player.
The money collected through car washes and other fundraisers in an average year won’t be nearly enough. Moseley estimates a player typically needs to raise about $500 a season just for herself and the team, which soon will be down to 13 players.
“Two of them will graduate, but there are 15 girls on the team,” she said. “We have nine freshmen, so it’s a very young team.” It includes one junior and three sophomores.
What will they do now?
“We’re going to plead to everybody, and we’re going to beg,” she said. “I hate to use that word, but we’re going to ask everybody and anybody who might have it in their heart to donate.”
Is used equipment OK?
“Truthfully, we’ll take anything we can, because we have nothing,” she said.
Gone
The equipment had been stored in a trailer and a shed behind the school’s rear parking lot, back by the track. The shed was gutted; the trailer burned to rubble.
“There is no way that it was an accident, in my mind,” said Moseley’s daughter, Kari. “Nothing caught on fire around it. It was just our shed and our trailer, and it couldn’t have been set off by just a cigarette or a match. It’s a metal shed. You’d have to pour gas or something on it to get it started.”
Said Elora Bush, 14: “I don’t know who would want to do something like that, but it was on Halloween night, so usually that’s when all the freaks come out. It was aggravating, because we worked so hard for all the stuff we had.”
She said the team in mid-season had got new “Wiffle” softballs that smelled like balloons, and she and Kari loved those. Players used the plastic balls to work on their swing, she said. The list of items lost includes 48 priced at $15 a dozen.
“The girls love to hit those,” said Melissa Portalatin, who heads the Lady Hawks booster club. Her older daughter, Felicia, played at Hardaway, and sister Brye, 14, is on the team now.
“We’re willing to take any and everything,” the mother said of donations. She said she particularly regrets the loss of eight batting helmets ($29 each, totaling $232).
Of the fire, Brye said: “It just made me feel mad and upset, how somebody could come to Hardaway, and already know that we don’t have that much, and then they just take it.”
Said teammate Amber Locey, 14: “I think they just did it because they thought it would be funny, and they didn’t think how it would affect other people.”
Kesa McLaurin, 16, said: “Everything we had in there was precious to us.”
Anyone who’d like to contribute money or equipment may contact Laura Moseley at 706-315-4438 or lmoseley@wcbradley.com, or Melissa Portalatin at 706-615-7533 or mportalatin@aflac.com — or mail a check for the Hardaway Lady Hawks Softball Booster Club to Melissa Portalatin at 5711 Fairchild Drive, Columbus, GA, 31909.
Contact Tim Chitwood at tchitwood@ledger-enquirer.com or 706-571-8508.
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