Storm Lake youth baseball shifts games from contaminated West Ninth field to protect players

Seventh- and eighth-grade games will not be played at West Ninth ball field this summer after Storm Lake Youth Baseball Association leaders said the city-owned diamond had become unsafe because cat feces covered the infield and outfield.

Association president Joe Kucera said the board decided not to schedule games there for the 2026 season after health warnings from parents who are doctors, an optometrist and other health officials. He said the concern went beyond bad maintenance and into the risk of ocular toxoplasmosis, an eye infection linked to the parasite Toxoplasma gondii that can cause pain, blurred vision, redness and permanent damage.

Kucera said there was no practical way to clean the field well enough to make it safe because the contamination had been ground into the soil. To gauge the scale of the problem, he and a city employee marked off 10-by-10-foot sections and counted cat piles, then estimated that about 300 piles covered the field. He also said the smell of cat urine and feces could be detected from the street.

The field has been used by the association’s majors teams, but those players are now practicing at the smaller diamond near East Early Childhood and cannot schedule home games there. Kucera said the issue also raised a broader warning for Storm Lake park infrastructure, because similar damage at other city facilities could require tens of thousands of dollars to repair.

The controversy comes after Storm Lake spent much of 2024 revisiting its stray-cat policy. The City Council approved a cat population-control program in August 2024 after public debate and a July forum, and the city later updated its animal ordinance. Storm Lake’s cat licensing rules say cats living within city limits must be licensed, with proof of rabies vaccination required and proof of spay or neuter required if claimed at licensing. The ordinance also allows property owners to refuse return of a trapped stray cat to the site where it was captured.

The public-health concern is not hypothetical. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says toxoplasmosis can be acquired from food, water or environmental samples contaminated with cat feces, and ocular disease can reactivate later and damage the retina again. Iowa Department of Health and Human Services says toxoplasmosis is not generally reportable unless there is a suspected outbreak.

West Ninth, in Storm Lake, remains central to city recreation planning. It is also being discussed as a possible dog park site in the city’s 2029 Capital Improvement Plan. For a community of 11,269 in Storm Lake and 20,823 in Buena Vista County, losing one usable ball field for a full summer has become a test of whether the city can keep basic public spaces safe, maintained and open to the families who rely on them.