Fire Ants Punt Middle School Football Team

Fire ants have forced a Weatherford middle school to uproot its football teams.

The ants have taken over Joe M. Tison Middle School's fields.

"We came out and looked and found a couple mounds," said Richard Scoggins, Weatherford school district athletic director. "Then we began to find bigger mounds. It got upward of 40 or 50 mounds on the fields."

On Tuesday, the school played all of its games at Kangaroo Stadium.

"We did not want kids landing in the fire ants and getting stung, because you don't know if anyone is allergic or not," Scoggins said.

In mid-September, Cameron Espinoza, a football player at a Corpus Christi middle school had a fatal allergic reaction after falling into a bed of fire ants during a football game. According to The Associated Press, the teen lost consciousness twice before medics arrived at the field.

Mary Stanley, the mother of a Tison seventh-grade player, said that moving the games was a good choice.

"The kids, with them being in it constantly, they're getting chewed up and there's a lot of health risks involved," she said.

Scoggins said he believes recent rains caused increased activity among the ants. The school district treated all of its fields Tuesday morning and said it would treat them again Wednesday.

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