Kids Football Team Wants Walmart To Rebuild Field Used To Build Store That Closed In Less Than A Year

Less than a year after seeing their patch of grass transform from a football field to a Walmart Express to a closed Walmart Express, the members of one Oklahoma youth football team are calling on the world’s largest retailer to replace their lost gridiron.

KFOR-TV reports that the city of Luther, OK, outside of Oklahoma City sold the land that included the baseball field to Walmart so the retailer could build a Walmart Express — a smaller footprint version of the big box store — on the site.

That store just opened in 2015, then last week it, along with all the other Express stores in the U.S., fell victim to Walmart’s fickle axe.

“It’s like adding insult to injury,” one local mom tells KFOR. “We lost our field, but now it feels like we lost it for no reason.”

Ever since their field became a doomed Walmart construction site, the team has had to use a local high school field for their games, which means they need to go out of pocket to pay to rent the space for practices and that they don’t get concession money when they play their actual games.

And so, the team has started a change.org petition, calling on Walmart — which has said it will sell or lease the land — to rebuild the field that once was.

“Walmart should do the right thing and rebuild the field and donate it to Luther Youth Football,” reads the petition. “It was a slap in the face to all these kids to lose their field and source of revenue only to have the store left vacant after less than a year!”