VALLEY GRANDE — Four new bleachers planned for the ball fields in Valley Grande have arrived, but work remains before they are ready for spectators in March.

Valley Grande Mayor Wayne Labbe said the city is taking bids from an outside group to assemble the bleachers. During Monday’s council meeting, Labbe proposed he would work alongside council members Saturday to assemble the new bleachers, but they later decided it would be best to have somebody else do the work.

“We’ve got a couple businesses that are going to give us bids to put these together,” Labbe said. “We took a look at them and we decided it would take a little more than we thought.”

Labbe said he knew of two companies who would be placing bids to do the work, and he expected to receive both bids early next week.

While they won’t be erecting the bleachers Saturday, Labbe said he would probably join council members in working on other projects at the Valley Grande Sports Complex if the weather allows.

“If it’s not too wet, we’ll be out there Saturday afternoon spreading some dirt and doing some painting and things like that,” Labbe said.

Monday’s meeting also featured an update from Larry Stover, who is one of two volunteers leading the newly formed Valley Grande Sports League.

Stover said he and fellow volunteer Annie Taylor have been working hard to recruit younger children to the league’s T-ball teams this year.

“T-ball is going through the roof; last year we had 38 kids, and we are already at 45 so far,” Stover said. “We’ve really hit the daycare centers, and it’s really made a difference.”

Along with the T-ball numbers, Stover also reported on the coach pitch and machine pitch leagues.

“We are pretty close to 30 kids in coach pitch, and we had 32 last year, so that’s really looking good,” Stover said. “Our big problem right now is machine pitch. We’ve only got 12 kids signed up right now and we’ve already passed out 2,000 fliers and I made 500 more today. That’s on me, not the city. And so, we are going to actually target Meadowview Christian and Morgan Academy again.”

Overall, Stover said the leagues have 85 children enrolled to participate this spring, including a large number who have turned to the VGSL over competing leagues in Selma.

“We probably have 20 people that left Selma leagues this year to come out here for a lot of different reasons,” Stover said.