Practice field turns into dream complex for area kids

THE WOODLANDS, Texas -- Six years ago, Bryan Beaty was just a guy with a little league team that had nowhere to practice. In an area where the population is booming but new playing fields aren't, he had hosted practices in his driveway, cheek by jowl with three other teams at one tiny park, or in a single batting cage in overcrowded indoor facilities. He finally resorted to baseball-dad lunacy, buying some land on the outskirts of Oak Ridge North and scraping a little practice field into it.

Beaty's first visitor, Joel Bartsch, was a crazy softball dad who had heard about Beaty's practice field. "One day I drove by and the sun was at the right angle. I looked over the roof of the Shell station and saw what turned out to be the top of the backstop, so I parked my car, hiked back in there, and saw a 40,000 square foot, all-turf ball field, just sitting in the middle of nowhere," Bartsch said. Next thing you know, he was on board to get his daughter a softball field. The trio added Connie May, a long-time area softball coach who runs the Texas Firecrackers softball program and whose daughter was an All-American at Texas A&M, and Scrap Yard Sports was in business.

Today, two dads’ dreams of a better facility have transformed into Scrap Yard Sports, a 75-acre sports complex on Robinson Road, with 17 baseball and softball fields completed or planned, an innovative take on artificial turf design, a 14,000 square foot pavilion and a whole lot of hand-me down equipment.

"We're already fielding calls everyday," Beaty said. Teams want to practice, they want to host tournaments—not just baseball and softball, but flag football, lacrosse, adult kickball leagues. As The Woodlands and surrounding areas have prospered, the available park space has grown cramped and harder to reserve each year. Scrap Yard has built a multipurpose park with the kids in mind, with adjustable outfield fences that can be taken down for football and lacrosse, or modified for bigger outfields in softball and baseball.

At first, Beaty's land held nothing but 40,000 square feet of turf. He added a reclaimed car dealership building from Rosenberg, and the main food and seating area and the name Scrap Yard was born. One night May went out with some friends and mentioned Scrap Yard, and ended the night securing a donation of 5,200 stadium seats. Three weeks later, Scrap Yard's fields had their first set of stands. Another of May's friends called up because he had a bunch of light poles lying in a field in Waller. Could she use them? Scrap Yard needed light poles—19 of them to be exact. Turns out, there were exactly 19. The Scrap Yard magic continued. They got tables, chairs and kitchen equipment from the old Fox & Hound; portables from HISD for umpire quarters and academic tutoring space during the week; and a gorgeous clubhouse from the commercial plumber who ran his own horse rescue next door but was looking to sell his luxury home to them for a deal.

What is most striking about the complex is the turf—acres and acres of beautiful artificial turf, the kind that will simmer to a low boil every summer. In Scrap Yard's case, however, the turf is its magic. Beaty's most passionate effort in the Scrap Yard Sports endeavor has been studying artificial turf and working to take the heat out of it in the scorching, extended Texas summers. He has studied schematics, researched what has worked and what doesn't, and called everyone he could think of. "You put in an order for 1 million square feet of artificial turf and you get some calls back," Beaty said. In the end, Beaty and the Scrap Yard folks believe they have a winner. "I redesigned it to take the heat out and to meet the specific needs of baseball and softball," Beaty says. The first few months of play on the fields show he's right. "The leading turf guys in the industry said I couldn't do it."

The summer of 2014 will be the first official temperature readings, but the early word is that the fields are as comfortable as they come during Houston's scorching 95-degree days, which will make the kids and their parents happy. "Our girls have been on turf fields at other facilities where their shoes melt," May said.

All that artificial turf will help keep the complex environmentally friendly—no grass means no sprinkling, a savings of over 1 million gallons of water yearly. "We heard from people who pay $12,000 a month in water bills," Bartsch said. Scrap Yard used environmentally sound crushed-rock parking lots to avoid creating a huge asphalt expanse.

And while Scrap Yard may have second-hand materials, its staff has first rate ideas about making the sporting experience enjoyable for the whole family. From fishing in their retention pond to what May calls "Bucee's-style bathrooms" with Dyson hand dryers and wood-doored stalls that are big enough to accommodate players when they need to change clothes, these sports fans are thinking about what it's like to spend their weekends and evenings at the ballpark and making it easier for families. The ball fields are geared for boys and girls— the girls play on true softball infields. The trio is constantly innovating on their dugout design to keep the players comfortable, with covered seating in the shade around fields so fans can enjoy the game in relative comfort. They are even considering simulcasting games to the clubhouse so families with little kids can escape the heat for stretches and still support their teams.

It started with one practice field, but it's turned into a dream complex for area kids.