Hanging out at the baseball diamond during the hot days of summer. That’s the opportunity being presented to the youth of Deer Lake for the summer of 2018.
Dan Bursey, a Cormack native, is serving as the spokesperson for a committee struck for the purpose of running a minor baseball program in Deer Lake.
The committee is focused on gauging interest in the town to see what kind of program could be offered. The numbers will ultimately dictate what can be offered and any boy or girl in the Deer Lake region is welcome to play.
“The biggest concern right now is interest with the kids. There’s never been a league here before,” Bursey said.
Bursey has been in touch with representatives of other baseball associations on the west coast in an effort to get a better sense of what’s involved in getting a program off the ground.
It’s too early to tell what the numbers will look like, but Bursey believes there will be a fair amount of interest in the Under-13 age group so that may be the age group the program is built around. Like some of the other associations have been doing over the past few years, the Deer Lake program will do what it can to move players around to ensure everybody gets to play and will support any player who has to play with another team from another association if that’s what it takes to get them on the field.
He has three children of his own and two of them — Maxwell, 13 and Samara, 11 — have expressed an interest in playing baseball.
He would love to see his children playing the game so he figured he could help by being involved with getting it started and supporting it anyway he can once youth are on the field.
There is no baseball field in the town, but there is a softball field that has been dormant for years that the program will operate from.
Bursey said the Town of Deer Lake is behind the program and that certainly helps the situation. He said the town is committed to doing some repairs and upgrades to make it a baseball diamond safe for play. More importantly, he said, if the program flourishes over the next few years there could very well be a new baseball diamond constructed for the program.
The committee will be busy over the next few months doing the legwork to get things moving and applications for government funding to support the initiative have been submitted for approval.
“Right now we’re in the process of laying the groundwork and figuring out what is possible for us this year with it being our first season,” he said.
Anybody looking for more information or interested in getting involved with Deer Lake minor baseball can contact Bursey via email at [email protected].
