Monday, March 3, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
ALL OVER THE VALLEY last weekend, in just about every stretch of open grass, groups of a dozen or so youngsters and their parents gathered to get acquainted and get to work.
Saturday, you see, was the beginning of March and the Little League practice season.
It was the first chance for coaches to size up their teams and their prospects this season. It was the first chance to see what they have to work with and what they'll have to work on. But mostly, it was the first chance to hit some grounders, play some catch and throw some batting practice with their new team.
At least that was true for those who could find a field to practice on.
For the coaches and league officials in North Las Vegas' Cheyenne Little League, that wasn't so easy.
Despite solemn, more-than-year-old promises by the North Las Vegas City Council and city officials, the league still hasn't gotten any more fields.
As a result, says Donna Cullins, president of the Cheyenne Little League, the 700 kids and 60 teams will be limited to one practice a week. And, she says, the T-ball teams won't have a diamond to practice on at all. They'll have to practice on open fields with no backstops or infields.
She also has 30 kids on a waiting list who may not get to play.
"I'm just begging, borrowing and stealing space," says Cullins, mother of twin 13-year-old ball players.
City officials are going to get an earful Wednesday night.
"We're going to go back to the North Las Vegas City Council," says Cullins. "We hope to pack the place."
Cullins says they'll be discussing unfulfilled promises made as long ago as December 1995, and they'll be talking about an alleged $2.7 million sitting unused in a parks fund.
Despite a half-dozen calls, no one was available Friday at City Hall to discuss ballfields.
Last December, however, Eric Dabney, who directs the city's parks and recreation facilities, presented the council with a list of 22 fields that would be ready by April 1, when the playing season starts.
As late as early January, Dabney was promising the league would get seven new fields: four at Wolfe Elementary School, two at Hartke Park and one at Richard Tam Park.
None is ready.
The field at Richard Tam Park hasn't been graded, says vice president Bob Nixon.
Of the four theoretical fields at Wolfe, only two have been started and Nixon says they "aren't even close to being ready." They're going to have to be regraded because the slopes are wrong, there are no dugouts or places for parents to sit, and they haven't been seeded for grass yet.
The season will be over before the grass will be mature enough to use, he figures.
As for Hartke Park, the lights have gone up, Nixon says, but the city doesn't have permission to turn them on because Nevada Power has to inspect them first. No one knows, he says, if that'll be done by April 1, when the season starts.
"You were told a month and a half ago that all these fields would be done," he tells me, "but it's a month and a half later and it's status quo."
Besides, says Cullins, many parents and coaches -- herself included -- have concerns about safety at Hartke, which is near Bruce Street south of East Lake Mead Boulevard.
"I had a North Las Vegas Police officer laugh at me," she says. "I told him he could take his team down there to practice and he said, 'Yeah, right, Donna.'"
Cullins says she won't let her son go down there for practice.
She describes an incident last June during all-star team practice during which four North Las Vegas officers ended up drawing their guns on a teenager who had what turned out to be a BB gun stuck in his pants. The team was practicing behind the suspect, right in the line of fire.
"The kids up here are not street smart," Cullins says. "They thought it was a TV show and went up to the fence to look.
"That was the first and last time we held practice at Hartke."
So Cullins is planning to make do with the seven fields the league had last year. Once again, because they still have no 90-foot fields, they'll have to send all their older players to play with the Lone Mountain Little League in Las Vegas.
And they'll continue to give the City Council a piece of their minds.
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