Local nonprofit Cy-Hope closed on the purchase of a 7-acre property near Campbell Middle School on May 13 with plans to expand Dierker’s Champs, a program that gives children from low-income families the opportunity to play baseball in a positive environment.
This group previously played behind Cy-Fair High School, but that space is now unusable due to the construction of new district facilities, according to Cy-Hope Executive Director Lynda Dierker. The nonprofit purchased surplus land from Cy-Fair ISD and anticipates having the new fields game-ready for the 2023 season.
“Once we build these fields, we feel like this will be an opportunity for us to grow and for us to do so much more because we will not be limited on Saturdays,” she said.
Cy-Hope is actively fundraising for the development of the field with a campaign called Pitch In. Officials with Cy-Hope said work on the property will be ongoing as funds are available, and the total cost of the project will be somewhere between $3 million-$5 million.
Participants are in elementary or middle school, and nonprofit leaders said many go on to play for their CFISD high school teams. The season kicks off with a camp run by the Cy-Fair High School baseball team in February and concludes with a celebration in May. Athletes also get the opportunity to attend a Houston Astros game each season.
Dierker's Champs Program Director Sheri Lee said many local kids who want to play baseball cannot afford to play club baseball in the area. This disparity led Cy-Hope to launch the program more than 10 years ago to not only teach students from local Title 1 schools how to play the game but also how to work with a team and be graceful in victory or defeat, she said.
“They’re so proud to be part of being able to play, and it keeps them off the street,” Lee said. “I mean, normally they wouldn’t have anything to do, so this way, it’s giving them something healthy and keeping them off the street and giving them a purpose and learning how to play as a team.”
Cy-Hope’s partnership with the school district has allowed it to keep track of how student-athletes are performing, allowing the teams to reward good behavior and grades. In fact, Dierker's Champs coaches are teachers from these schools.
“The teachers all know, and they’re working with [the students], so to me that’s the key,” Lee said. “They’re so passionate, and they care so much about the kids, whereas if you get an outsider ... they just don't have the same passion for these kids like the teachers do in the schools.”
School counselors at many campuses identify students who need a little extra motivation to do well in school and encourage them to try out for the program, and tryouts are open to all at campuses with larger economically disadvantaged populations. Lee said at times when a child has acted out in class, the teachers can inform the coaches who in turn may have the child do more conditioning that day or bench them for a game.
Before the pandemic, about 375 students participated across 18 teams, but Lee said she already expects to exceed those numbers for the 2023 season and looks forward to seeing the league grow once the new fields are built.
For Dierker's Champs namesake Larry Dierker—former Houston Astros pitcher, announcer and manager—the program is a safe, fun place for children to learn a skill and have fun without the average pressures of club baseball programs.
"The population of the teams that we serve now are all kids that have almost no experience," he said. "What I'd like to be able to do is get this program going strong enough that we can compete with the other kids in the other leagues because we don't have any shortage of athletes."
