A Houston high school football team is scrambling to identify a pair of thieves who stole their tackling sled just before the start of summer workouts or, failing that, a replacement.
As reported by Houston NBC affiliate KPRC, the Booker T. Washington High School (Houston, Texas) football team had two thieves cut a wire fence, enter a practice field and steal one of the program’s three-man football sleds. The theft was videotaped by a local resident and included the scene where the brazen thieves push the sled right off the field to a truck waiting nearby.
“It’s very disheartening, and it’s egregious that somebody would come along on the school campus property and steal equipment,” John Gibbs, president-elect for the Booker T. Washington Alumni Association, told KPRC. “I was angry. I was very, very angry because we strive so hard, you know, to put back and give back to the community.
“Why would somebody think that when the gates are closed, you can open a hole in the fence as if they gave permission from somebody on the campus to take away equipment?”
Gibbs is now leading the charge to replace the stolen sled via a grassroots fundraising effort. If that doesn’t work, the incoming alumni president is confident the program will muddle through … albeit minus an asset that was essential to both Washington and local youth football programs.
