Who We Are!
Second Chance Fields is a San Diego based nonprofit whose mission is dedicated to serving the community through sports! We accomplish this through our three flagship programs, Back in the Game & Field of Dreams, Education for Athletes and finally, Second Chance Scholarships. Education for Athletes provides educational tutoring that is catered to and designed around the high student athlete’s busy practice and game schedule. Back in the Game & Field of Dreams are programs that provide affordable repairs and maintenance to damaged areas of a Schools sports field or a complete replacement if the extent of the damage is such that the entire field needs to be replaced to address the problem. Finally, Second Chance Scholarships is a scholarship program that provides assistance to student athletes who lost a college athletics scholarship offer due to sustaining a serious injury while still playing for their high school sports team.
Our Mission
Second Chance Fields provides hope to student athletes of all ages through academic support programs tailored around the student athletes’ rigorous sports schedules. In addition to supporting the student athletes’ academic success we also support their ability to enjoy the sports they love free from unnecessary injury due to dangerous field conditions. We do this by equipping them with new, modern and safe athletic playing fields in financially struggling neighborhoods and school districts. Together with project sponsorships, skilled volunteer labor, in-kind donations, Partnerships with foundations as well as with civic minded local businesses, Second Chance Fields performs the work ourselves to provide the student athletes we serve with new, updated and safe sports fields that the kids and the surrounding community can take pride in. Our programs, volunteers and donors work hard to bring out the absolute best in every student athlete we serve!
Community Need
Second Chance Fields provides a ‘breath of life’ to public schools located in districts whose outdoor sports facilities have been all but decommissioned by budget cuts. These cuts have affected the ability of California’s public schools to financially maintain their sport fields. These failures result in insufficient maintenance across the state and in most cases, outright neglect to the point of causing serious surface degradation, creating sports fields that are outright dangerous for the kids to play on! These dangerous fields have become an all too common occurrence in Southern California schools and the primary source of serious injuries sustained by the young athletes who play on them.
In a statement by the Executive Director of the National Federation of State High School Associations, Bob Gardner, he acknowledges the challenges and importance of sports programs in public schools, saying:
So even though high schools are seeing a growth in student athletes engaging in organized sports at the high school level, the fields they are forced to play on are falling apart and becoming more and more dangerous, exposing more kids to injury than ever before. Most of the San Diego County public high school system’s sports fields are over 30 years old and almost all of them are unsafe in one way or another. An extensive goffer presence in San Diego school fields is the cause of multiple torn ACL and ankle injuries every year. Mud, caused by rare occurrences of rain on fields whose grass turf has all but died and dried up, causes a staggering number of ankle and knee injuries to young athletes. Most baseball fields in the county don’t have anything in front of the dugouts to protect the kids from foul balls. These balls, when hit hard enough, bounce off the walls inside the dugout presenting a “pinball effect” and are the cause of numerous serious head injuries. Very few of these baseball fields have warning tracks either, which serve as a warning to the outfielder that the wall is close in order to decrease serious injuries due to collisions.
While State funding for California schools decreases more and more each year, some high schools have had to cut their sports programs all together, switching to a “Pay to Play” system instead. Schools have started providing their facilities to “for Profit” club sports, that require the kids to pay huge sums of money to play the sports that once were offered to them free of charge through the public school systems. This is why Second Chance Fields and our programs are so important. Our programs provide valuable resources to our community by:
- Providing underfunded school districts with top quality, professional sports turf repair and maintenance contracting services at prices they can afford. We work with the schools we serve to ensure they get the repairs their students deserve, regardless of their current budget.
- Providing tutoring services to entire sports teams, catering around their schedule instead of forcing student athletes to play until their grades prohibit their continued involvement in the sport because of their grades.
- Providing student who lost a college athletic scholarship due to a high school injury a second chance to attend college and “walk on to the team” through Second Chance Scholarships.
Second Chance Fields is a San Diego based nonprofit serving Southern California. As our organizations influence grows we hope to expand our services to California, as a whole, and eventually nationwide! We, of course, can’t do this without the amazing men and women, as well as the businesses and foundations who support our cause by donating to Second Chance Fields. We have many different options when it comes to donating in all shapes and sizes. So If you are interested in seeing how you can support Second Chance Fields, then click here and submit your information, or email Info@scfields.org with your donor interest specifics and a donation specialist will contact you right away to work with you one on one to create a donor package that is right for you!
On behalf of Second Chance Fields, we Thank you for your support and dedication to our cause, what we do would not be possible without your help!
