Staff at Sunbury West School in Fredericton Junction, N.B. say their field is badly damaged and unusable after someone took a joy ride through it on the weekend.
READ MORE: $100K vandalism spree damages 25 vehicles in southeast Edmonton
Stephen Doucette, a Sunbury West School physical education teacher, said there was a vehicle doing “donuts and spinouts” on the field.
“There wasn’t much consideration for the community, my guess is a couple of people coming down thought they were going to have a good time in their truck and did some spinouts in the mud,” said Doucette.
Resident Jennifer Barrieau lives behind the school and was home Saturday night when it happened. She said she was woken up by a vehicle with no muffler driving on the field.
“They started doing donuts at one end and pretty much covered the whole field rutting it up. It’s going to take a lot of work to fix it,” said Barrieau.
The field is now a mess and her children have started calling it a muck pile.
“My oldest daughters almost thirteen and she uses the field quite often for her activities and she couldn’t believe it. She was taking pictures to show her friends,” Barrieau said. “I think they were just out for a great old joy ride on Saturday night and probably should have stuck to their back roads than taken up the soccer field.”
Doucette said the field is in bad shape and it limits the recreational activities available for students.
“If we were going to be playing soccer we wouldn’t be able to,” said Doucette. “The fields definitely not usable, the local community has a soccer program that they operate in June and July and as it stands right now, if the field doesn’t get fixed they probably won’t be able to use it.”
He’s “disappointed” and “disheartened” that someone would do this to the field.
“It’s definitely unnecessary. There’s lots of places in the country you can find a dirt road and go mudding on. It’s never good when you take a recreation facility away from people,” said Doucette.
Barrieau wants to see the field fixed whatever the cost.
“I know we needed soccer nets, I know there’s lots of other things we could have spent the money on but I would say that they’re gonna have to try and fix it so the kids can have their field back,” said Barrieau.
RCMP are investigating while the district is starting to look at estimates for the cost of repairs. He added that he will have to adapt the physical activity curriculum.
Doucette hopes whoever is responsible turns themselves in.
“You’ve taken a very nice part of the community away,” he said.
Comments