SAN ANTONIO -- Athletes at a north-side YMCA say recent rainfall has turned the playing fields into obstacle courses pocked with dangerous fire ant mounds.
Officials at the Mays YMCA in the 21000 block of Blanco Road said they have called a pest control company to look at the problem. They have also moved kids sports to the back fields where the problem is less apparent.
Rose Monday is an Olympic trainer who just back from London, where she had been training a group of athletes. On Tuesday, she compared the ant hills to another common field problem: pot holes.
"It would be like if it was a pot hole," she said. "They're not going to run in a pot hole. If they see a fire ant hole they just go around it."
Michael Courtney, a runner, said the ant hills aren't too hard to avoid.
"But I could see how if there are kids soccer games going on out here, and you know, you got a kid playing with the daisies or something, and he's standing in a fire ant pile -- start getting bit," Courtney said.
Officials with the YMCA did not want to speak on camera but said they have spread insecticide on some of the ant hills.
