Return of Little Leagues provides some sense of normalcy

John Russo has been involved with the Latrobe Little League for two decades and is in his second year as the organization’s president.

Like many of his counterparts, he has been through it all the past couple of months as the covid-19 pandemic and government-imposed safety restrictions threw a wrench into the league’s spring and summer plans.

Several area leagues decided to shut down operations for the summer.

When Gov. Tom Wolf set counties in Southwestern Pennsylvania in the green phase June 5, other leagues, including Latrobe, chose to move quickly with plans for truncated seasons. Those seasons are jumping off with the hopes of returning some summer normalcy to an otherwise far-from-normal time.

“For what’s been going on, I am really pleased with our numbers,” said Russo, who helped conduct last Tuesday’s league draft and led a covid-19 safety meeting in advance of the planned opening day Sunday.

The in-house league, Russo said, features 150-plus players split among 14 teams in the coach-pitch minors (ages 9-11) and majors (10-12) divisions.

“That is really close to where we normally are,” Russo said. “To be able to put together that many teams, we feel pretty good about that.”

While some families elected not to have their children play because of safety reasons, league presidents said they have received positive responses to opening with the precautions in place.

Each league is using guidelines from the Pennsylvania Little League, The PA Parks and Recreation and the Centers for Disease Control.

Those measures cover such things as:

• Proper social distancing among players in and out of the dugout

• Spectators

• Position of the home plate umpire

• Ways to effectively manage and sanitize equipment, including bats, gloves, balls and catcher’s equipment

“We’ve been reaching out to different folks to see what they are doing and what makes sense,” Plum Baseball and Softball Association president John Nabozny said. “We just want to get the kids back to playing baseball and softball the safest way possible.”

Plum teams in the baseball and softball divisions began practicing last Monday, and games are set to start June 20 and 22. Travel teams also are eyeing game opportunities.

“Some kids hadn’t touched a baseball or softball in about nine months, so we didn’t want to go into games right away with them not being ready,” Nabozny said. “We also had administrative things like scheduling to take care of, and some of our fields are still being repaired from the flooding last year.”

West Point Little League, with four divisions for baseball and softball and travel teams for softball, opens with practices Monday leading into an opening day June 27.

“We wanted to delay our start to get a little more clarity on how to properly implement the safety measures and also to get things properly organized with registration,” West Point president Thomas Rennie said. “We are making sure everyone involved, from players, parents and umpires, understand what we are doing.

“Anything we have now is kind of gravy with what we were facing back in March. We had a cleanup day to get things ready, and the fields are in great shape and the facility looks wonderful. Now that we can say, ‘We are a go,’ it’s exciting.”

District 26 members Armstrong, Lower Burrell, Freeport and Deer Lakes join Latrobe, West Point and Plum in starting up summer seasons.

“Our community is excited to have baseball,” said Deer Lakes Youth Baseball Association president Jay Fraser, who has welcomed more than 150 players this season.

“I’ve gotten 25 to 30 emails from different members of the community thanking us for sticking with it and making it a priority to not give up on the kids.”

Deer Lakes features four in-house divisions, with the older three (ages 9 to 14), also taking part in travel games against teams from McCandless, Pine-Richland, Hampton and Freeport.

Fraser oversaw the start of practices June 5. League play began Saturday on several area fields with a championship date of July 25.

“Through the first couple of practices, you could see an easily recognizable difference in a lot of the kids,” Fraser said. “They are happy to be out there and with their friends playing a game they love. That’s big.While we have very direct safety measures in place, I appreciate and fully understand those (families) who have those concerns and opted not to participate.”

Organizations choosing not to host games this summer include District 26 members Highlands, Leechburg, Lower Valley, Apollo-Kiski and West Shamokin.

But many leagues, including all 11 from District 26, are going to have fall ball with early starts or an increase in the number of games.

“With everything that is going on, our board was unsure about what could happen if we would go back into yellow (phase),” Apollo-Kiski president Eric Kowalczyk said.

“They determined to refund everybody and go from there. I made the motion about having early fall ball starting in August and going to October with early sign-ups in July. Instead of a six-week season, I said let’s have a 10-week season. I know we would lose some kids to football, but at least we would have some kids out there moving around and playing the game.”

Kowalczyk said Apollo Sandlot, which is not affiliated with Little League baseball, is having pickup games now for youth ages 8 to 15.

Lower Burrell Little League president Kerry Harris admitted there were talks in the organization about joining other leagues and not having a season. But in the end, the decision was rendered to move forward for the roughly 160 kids for baseball coach pitch, minors (9-10) and majors (11-12). Harris said the Lower Burrell board met weekly to try and stay on top of everything, including the gameplan for safety at each field.

“A certain kid having an opportunity to get a winning hit or getting that winning strikeout … it’s things as a coach you’ve seen over the years that have kept some of us who are volunteers going to get this ready for the kids,” Harris said. “It’s the memories of working with those kids and seeing them succeed on the field. That has been a lot of motivation with all the ups and downs and not knowing what’s going to happen day-in and day-out.”