Libby soccer gives back to the community

The Libby boys soccer team recently spent their Saturday giving back to the community. After a team breakfast at Henry’s Restaurant, team members spent the next two hours leveling and repairing the soccer fields at the Asa Wood School.

Loggers coach, Mark Petersen said the fields at Asa Wood have not been playable for quite some time due to the holes.

“It was a spontaneous project,” he said. “Both the girls and boys high school soccer team practices and plays at J. Neils Park. The recreational soccer team just started and they play there to. Some of the parents and myself all agreed that we needed more space for practice. Asa Wood couldn’t be used because there were gopher holes and they had been neglected.”

After speaking to the assistant principal at the high school the school district agreed that something needed to be done about the fields at Asa Wood.

“I talked to Mr. Germany at the high school and told him about the situation,” Petersen said. “I told him that we could make the fields at Asa Wood usable, but we would need some topsoil. On Friday, Sept. 4, he delivered some topsoil and the next day we went out to Asa Wood and went to work.”

Petersen organized a team breakfast for the boys before they went to work on the fields.

“We organized a breakfast for the boys on Saturday and told them to bring shovels,” he said. “It rained Saturday morning and that made things interesting. One of the boy’s parents had a Kubota tractor and that helped move things along. We got the whole job done in a couple of hours rather than spending a half-day doing it.

Petersen said it was a good team bonding experience.

“It was a lot of fun,” he said. “Not all of the boys were able to be there because their families already made plans for Labor Day weekend. We got the fields usable again and it was good for the boys to do something like this.”

Now that the fields at Asa Wood are usable again Petersen said he hopes people in the community start using them again.

“The kids will practice over there now,” he said. “Those fields are visible and people used to have Sunday pick up games there. The fields had been neglected because the school was no longer maintaining them. The fields are visible from the highway and hopefully people start using them again. Instead of having to go outside of town a little bit to play a pick up game kids can just go to Asa Wood.”