NONPROFIT Cy-Hope purchases land to develop Dierker’s Champs baseball elds
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BY MIKAH BOYD & DANICA LLOYD
for the development of the elds. O cials said work on the property will be ongoing as funds are available, and the cost of the project will be between $3 million-$5 million. Each season kicks o with a camp concludes with a celebration in May. Participants also get the opportunity to attend a Houston Astros game. Dierker’s Champs Program Director run by the Cy-Fair High School baseball team in February and Sheri Lee said many children who want to play baseball cannot a ord to locally. This disparity led Cy-Hope to launch the program more than 10 years ago to teach students from Title I schools how to play the game, how to work with a team and be graceful in victory or defeat. “Normally they wouldn’t have anything to do, so this way, it’s giving them something healthy and keeping them o the street and giving them a purpose and learning how to play as a
Dierker’s Champs 713-906-0239 www.dierkerschamps. squarespace.com
Local nonpro t Cy-Hope closed on the purchase of a 7-acre prop- erty near Campbell Middle School on May 13 with plans to expand Dierker’s Champs, a program that gives elementary and middle school students 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 nonpro t purchased surplus land from Cy-Fair ISD and anticipates having the new elds ready for the 2023 season. “Once we build these elds, 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 [to] Saturdays,” she said. Cy-Hope is actively fundraising
Hundreds of children have participated in Dierker’s Champs. (Courtesy Cy-Hope)
team,” she said. 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.” Before the pandemic, 375 students
participated across 18 teams, but Lee said she already expects to exceed those numbers in 2023 and looks forward to seeing the league grow. For Dierker’s Champs namesake Larry Dierker—former Houston Astros pitcher, announcer and manager—the program is a safe place for children to learn a skill and have fun. “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.”
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