05/18/2026
Spring 2026 was one for the books!
For 3 years, we left history in La Feria. We brought life back to youth sports through flag football, tackle football, girls flag, cheer, and basketball. We took kids all over Texas ,Dallas, Houston, Round Rock, and more and showed them there is more out there than just the RGV or rec ball.
We never hid our kids from competition. We wanted them to see the talent out there and understand that there are kids everywhere chasing the same goals and competing at the same level.
It is sad that after 3 years, we have to close the La Feria Jr Lions and move into a new area in Harlingen. Some may ask why the move. The truth is, we are a nonprofit organization. People think private organizations make money, but we don’t. We make enough from registration, small raffles, and fundraisers to get things started for the kids and keep moving forward.
My wife and I never had kids on these teams. We opened La Feria Jr Lions because we wanted to give back to our community. Ask the people who know us they will tell you we gave our time, our love, and our hearts to these kids.
We sponsored many kids who couldn’t afford to play sports because we wanted to give them a chance to fall in love with the game and many of them did.
We even offered to show the city our financial records to prove that the year before, we were negative $11,000, and we used our own personal finances to keep the organization running without the kids or parents having to worry.
Why did we do it? For the love of the kids.
Another issue we faced was the city wanting to turn the public fields where we practiced into a soccer complex. We met with the city, and they wanted to know what kind of price we could offer to rent the fields. We also met with Alfonso and Charlie, and honestly, they were upset that we were there because they felt we were taking kids away from their rec department programs.
But the truth is, we never once told parents where they should play or where they should take their kids. Parents made those choices on their own. We even offered to work together with the parks department so that when our seasons were over, we could help direct kids back into their programs to continue playing until we started again.
La Feria ISD also charged us just under $7,000 to use the stadium in the fall for 4 games, which came out to roughly $1,700 per game, and we were not allowed to run concessions to make any money back for the kids.
At the end of the day, I am not here to put anyone or anything down. That is not what we are about. But I do feel for the kids from La Feria. All we tried to do was bring youth sports back to life, give kids better opportunities, get them out of only rec programs, and allow them to compete against other cities and travel up north to face real competition.
The City of La Feria and La Feria ISD need to understand that all we did was care for the kids of La Feria. We wanted to help build them up, help them grow, and help prepare them for the middle school and high school levels.
To all the parents, children, coaches, athletes, and supporters thank you for an amazing 3 years.
We won’t be far. We will be right down the road.
Goodbye, La Feria Jr Lions.
Thank you for the memories.
