Volunteers Rebuild Sports Bleachers

Editor's note: Updated with comments from the city parks and rec supervisor. August 18 at 4:18 p.m.

A group of parents aren't standing around while their kids are at football practice—they're tearing down the bleachers.

The parents, mostly dads, are volunteers whose kids participate in the Milpitas Knights PAL Football and Cheer. During practice, they've been removing the wooden planks from the visitor stands. Soon they hope to install new ones.

The nonprofit Pee Wee football program practices on the  field where there are two sets of bleachers—home and visitor. The visitor bleachers have been off-limits for the past year after they were deemed unsafe.

“The bleachers were unsafe,” said David Montufar, whose son plays for the Junior Midgets and daughter with the Mighty Mites. "They announced it to everybody that the city wasn’t going to cover it, and they needed volunteers."

The city had determined the wooden planks to be deteriorating, but the metal structure was sound, according to Parks and Recreation Supervisor Jaime Chew in an email.

"The city was exploring creative options to repair the visitor’s bleacher without a direct impact to the operating budget," she wrote.

"However, since PAL Football is the largest user of the sports center football field and visitor bleachers, they took it upon themselves to start a campaign to seek sponsorship for the replacement/upgrading of the visitor’s bleachers," she wrote. "They successfully secured sponsorship for the replacement and volunteers to install them."

Although the original plan was to finish by the annual mini-Jamboree event on Saturday, where the Knights invite their counterparts from Evergreen, Union City, Hayward, Scotts Valley and San Jose Storm.

From 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., “We invite the teams and split the fields," said Bobby Carswell, president of the Milpitas Knights. "We play each division, consisting of five to seven teams for two hours; each team plays each other for 20 minutes."

While the new bleachers won't be ready by Saturday, they should be ready to go by Sept. 10, the start of the official football season, said Donny Malone, a parent overseeing the project.

Until then, it's sweat and hard work.

“I knew I was going to be busting my butt taking the bleachers out,” said Duane Jones, a parent of two boys who play for the Knight’s Junior Midget and Midget divisions. "I’ll be here until we finish."

The costs will be covered by parents, too, along with an in-kind donation from Lowe's in Santa Clara for materials.

"We don't know how much the project is going to cost yet, because we haven't gotten all the materials, but we're looking for donations," said Milpitas Knights President Bobby Carswell. 

But the example of volunteerism and teamwork is priceless.