Northeast Philly softball facility looking to rebuild after equipment is targeted by vandals
The incident at Penn Academy Softball marks the third time in the last two years that the organization has been vandalized, director Jim D’Agostino said.
Penn Academy Softball was targeted by vandals on Sunday night.
A parent driving by noticed a fire on the Northeast Philadelphia field in the evening. The fire was put out, but the organization’s equipment shed was broken into and a number of items were destroyed, including a four-wheeler the organization uses to maintain the field, according to softball director Jim D’Agostino. Pictures and videos of the vandalism later were posted to an anonymous Instagram account but were quickly deleted.
The Penn Academy Softball season is set to start in a few months and now faces large financial setbacks.
“We now have to come up with a whole new way to store things and come up with the money to do all that,” D’Agostino told The Inquirer. “We’re a small club, and we don’t have that kind of money to do this. Any money that we get goes to the girls. Now we have to come up with that money and then get the work done. We’re not a huge organization, so it’s not something we can just run out and snap a finger and get done. It’s going to cause a lot of stress on a lot of us to get ready. We will get ready. We will have the season. We will never leave the girls out in the cold. It will get done, but it’s going to take a lot of lot of effort and time to do it.”
Penn Academy Softball is a local nonprofit that helps girls play softball without financial barriers. This is the third time in two years that the equipment shed has been broken into, D’Agostino said.
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Despite the vandalism, D’Agostino said the organization remains committed to its home on Academy Road. Several members of the city and state legislature have reached out to offer support to the organization, including City Council member Mike Driscoll.
Driscoll said he, State Sen. James Dillon, and State Rep. Pat Gallagher asked the organization for a wish list of needed items to help the organization get back on its feet. There is a cleanup scheduled for Martin Luther King Jr. Day to assist with the graffiti on the field. Driscoll also said he has been in contact with a number of people and organizations interested in partnering with Penn Academy Softball to help.
“We’re going to try and figure this out between the nonprofit and all these stakeholders that want to help,” Driscoll said. “We want to spring into action on Martin Luther King Day, volunteer, and then going forward, getting their equipment where they need it to be, get the fields to be where they need them to be, and, hopefully, a turn a bad situation into a good situation.”
The organization has a verified GoFundMe page to help raise funds for a new shipping container to store equipment to prevent future vandalism and to replace other items that were destroyed.