A fire ripped through a storage room at a city park in Kapolei, destroying thousands of dollars’ worth of children’s sporting equipment.

Some Leeward Oahu youth soccer volunteers are calling Saturday’s blaze suspicious.

Honolulu Fire Department Capt. Scot Seguirant said the fire at a bathroom at Kapolei Regional Park started just before 3 a.m. Saturday. Five firefighters responded and put out the fire at 4:12 a.m. He said the cause of the fire was under investigation.

Kanani Velasco, a board member with the Leeward American Youth Soccer Organization, said volunteers discovered the damage when they showed up at about 7 a.m. Saturday to prepare for that day’s games.

The fire had destroyed goal posts, flags, tents, tables, signs and more inside the roughly 7-by-10-foot storage room.

Velasco estimated the fire destroyed about $8,000 worth of equipment.

With some 100 children under the age of 6 expected to play their third soccer game this season Saturday, members of the all-volunteer organization responded by retrieving old goal posts from another storage facility. The posts were larger than the regulation size for the children, but they allowed the kids to play.

Velasco said Leeward AYSO organizes soccer for about 850 youth, ages 3 to 18, from Kapolei to Makaha. The equipment lost in the fire would affect all those players and adults who also stored goal posts in the storage space.

She said the organization would have to order goal posts from the mainland because they aren’t made in Hawaii.

Some volunteers were disheartened by the fire, but Velasco said others were ready to rebound. One volunteer set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for new equipment. As of Sunday evening it had raised about $3,000 of its $8,000 goal. The campaign can be found by searching AYSO 269 on the GoFundMe home page.

Velasco and others suspect the fire was intentionally set because the damage was heaviest near the metal doors, where the fire appeared to have started. She said there have been more homeless at the park and that sometimes volunteers have to wake up people sleeping in front of the storage space.

“It was really sad,” she said, but added that the organization would move on.

“We’re cleaning it up,” she said. “We’ve got to come back for the kids.”