Texas Panhandle Youth Sports Foundation donates $125,000 to Kids Inc.

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - The Texas Panhandle Youth Sports Foundation held an event at Hodgetown on Wednesday.

During the event, the foundation presented Kids Inc. with a $12,000 check to go towards the Kids Inc. project to build new facilities off of I-27 for youth athletes across the Texas Panhandle to enjoy.

Kids Inc. CEO and president Jimmy Lackey has big goals for the facilities once built, highlighted by a story regarding the facilities he helped build in Oklahoma.

“He said ‘Well, y’all didn’t quite tell us the truth about how long it was going to take to recover these dollars,’” Lackey said of his conversation with the team manager on the project over in Elk City. He said, ‘We recovered them in two years, in a pandemic, with softball and baseball tournaments.’ Can you imagine what we can do here if we have the facilities in this town?”

Also during the event, the foundation announced that they are partnering with the City of Amarillo to lease the parks at Rick Klein and John Stiff Park.

“We will be taking over from the city all of the maintenance responsibilities, the capital improvements, and what were hoping is that this really puts the user group that most uses them, the people that are out there everyday really in charge of making sure that these facilities are top class,” Texas Panhandle Youth Sports Foundation board member Jason Herrick said.

The Kids Inc. project to build those facilities is still yet to reach the $30 million goal needed to start construction.

Lackey said the campaign sits at “about $18 million” currently.

You can find more information, here.

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