About 20 parents and a handful of players attended the open meeting at the Hodder Memorial Recreation Complex to gauge the interest level in making baseball available to area youth next summer in the airport town.
Town recreation director Junior Pinksen hosted the meeting and was pleased with the interest shown by parents who are willing to roll up their sleeves.
“We really feel that we have the base for a grassroots program,” Pinksen said Wednesday when asked how he felt the meeting went.
The closest minor baseball program a child in Deer Lake can access is Pasadena. There are a couple dozen youth from Deer Lake who travel to Pasadena to sock around the baseball because they have no other option.
Pinksen said starting a program from scratch will require work but he believes it’s not only good for the Deer Lake youth who want to participate, but also thinks it will complement not hurt the other minor baseball programs on the west coast.
“It’s not taking away from anything,” he said.
More importantly, he loves the idea that any child in Deer Lake who wants to play baseball will have a chance to do it in their own backyard versus travelling down the highway several times a week.
“There are kids who probably aren’t playing baseball because they can’t travel to Pasadena, so it would be great that we’d be able to offer it in our own community,” he said.
Interest was high enough for Pinksen to move forward with setting Sept. 19 as a date for an election of officers to oversee a minor baseball program in Deer Lake. He’s going to be talking with other minor baseball groups to pick their brain on ideas about getting a program up and running and there will be a promotional campaign that will see organizers put out feelers to the schools in September when school starts up.
“We really feel that if we do all this stuff now come the spring you will be able to move forward with the program,” he said.
