BINGHAM — Local residents say it’s not unusual to see children crowding the baseball and softball fields outside Quimby Middle School each afternoon, although it wasn’t always that way.

The fields, which recently underwent a face-lift with the help of local volunteers who also rebuilt two dugouts, have been an integral part of getting more young people involved in the town’s growing youth sports program, according to local officials involved with the project.

They also come at a time when many local school districts and municipalities are faced with ever-tightening budgets and lack of volunteers.

In Bingham, the number of children 10 years old and younger who participate in local youth sports has doubled this year from last, said Maureen McDonald, director of the Bingham Recreational Sports Department.

“Everybody’s excited,” said Leo Hill, 45, a Bingham resident and member of the local school board who has three daughters in the softball program. “The fields behind the Quimby school weren’t used for quite a while, and now they are. The kids are always out playing baseball or softball, or both. There’s a lot of activity and it’s good to see.”

Hill, who is the recreation department’s softball commissioner, said that last year he and another parent started a softball team and wanted to expand the program this year to include boys as well as girls. Two volunteers, Scott Collins and Dana Robinson, as well as Hill and others helped to rebuild the fields behind the school.

“We’ve had help from a lot of people,” Hill said. “We got together with the other towns, like Madison and Skowhegan, to come up with full schedules for games and found volunteers to coach the boys. Now we have five teams.”

Julie Richard, the town’s third selectwoman and the districtwide principal in Bingham-based School Administrative District 12, said the accomplishments of the local parents and volunteers is even more impressive given that their project was organized and executed just over the last two months, after the town already had set its annual budget.

“This group has been meeting regularly to find ways to raise money, and they’ve been quite successful,” she said. “It really is parents and volunteers coming together, and it’s all a volunteer effort.”

The Bingham Fire Department, Sappi Fine Paper, NAPA Auto Parts in Bingham and Skowhegan Savings Bank were all among local businesses that donated to the costs of repairing the fields and building the dugouts.

“It just kept growing from there,” Richard said. “All of a sudden we have a schedule and we have two baseball teams. Last year we didn’t have baseball at all.”

The growth of the recreational sports program also coincides with a town effort to install a new playground at Quimby Middle School, a project that should take about three years to complete, according to Richard. Most of the school’s playground equipment was vandalized several years ago, and since then children from the middle school and those who live in downtown Bingham have not had access to a playground, she said.

At Town Meeting, residents voted to approve spending an additional $5,000 in the recreation department budget to help fund a new playground.

“There’s really no playground at Quimby,” Richard said. “During the school year they get transported (to Moscow), but there’s not one in their neighborhood in the summer. We have beautiful fields now, and tennis courts, and we just got to thinking how nice it would be for a family, if they came for a baseball game, to let their other children play on the playground.”

In the meantime, recreation department officials say they hope the recent success of the youth sports program will continue into the basketball season.

“We’ve all worked together really well, so I think (youth sports) are just going to continue to grow,” McDonald said. “When kids are engaged in sports, even if they don’t end up playing sports in the long run, the act of having done it teaches them how to be part of a team, how to manage a schedule, allocate the time and see the community rally behind them. It’s just so beneficial.”

Rachel Ohm — 612-2368

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Twitter: @rachel_ohm