Northwest Indiana youth football team devastated by fire that destroyed fieldhouse

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    HAMMOND, Indiana (WBBM) — Fire could sideline a youth football program in Northwest Indiana for the season—but the team has promised to come back stronger no matter what.

The season hasn’t even kicked off, but the Northlake Pop Warner Little Scholars Football and Cheerleading program is already facing its toughest challenge yet with the fire.

“I didn’t know what to say when I saw it,” said 9-year-old Di’Anthony Marshall, a football player with Northlake Pop Warner. “It was just like a memory of me just fell apart.”

Di’Anthony, a hard-hitting linebacker, is now without his equipment—as is the rest of the team, and the cheerleaders who root them on.

“We lost everything,” said Kaylee Tello, president of the Northlake Pop Warner Little Scholars.

Early Sunday morning, a fire ripped through the team’s fieldhouse—a garage-like structure at Pulaski Park in Hammond, Indiana, where the team practices and stores its gear. Crisped jerseys and charred facemasks were all that remained afterward.

“My heart is broken,” Tello said. “This place, especially during the season, this is our home.”

Tello estimated about $30,000 to $60,000 worth of gear and equipment were destroyed, along with decades of priceless memories like trophies and pictures.

“We don’t have the funds to replace that,” she said. “We have the funds for just the season.”

An online fundraiser has been started to help rebuild.

“Devastation, sadness,” said Northlake Pop Warner Football parent Annetha Bartley, “and also hopeful that we will be able to bounce back even stronger—and start practicing again once we get our equipment back.”

“I’m going to start thinking about this during football, and I’m going to get sad,” added Di’Anthony.

While the structure and everything inside are complete loss, leaders with the program say they want the unexpected setback to serve as a lesson for the kids in the program.

“Don’t let anything get you down. Keep moving forward,” Tello said. “You can be put down one million times. It’s just how you get back up—kind of like football.”

The cause of the fire remained under investigation late Monday.

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