Q. What do you enjoy about working with the Piedmont Baseball League?
A. Piedmont really represents what’s true about why they call the game the national pastime. It’s got a great community surrounding it and that’s really what makes Piedmont the best game in town, the people and the families here in Hockessin. The best thing about Piedmont is watching the children grow.
Q. Can baseball and softball be an academic teaching tool?
A. Absolutely. The games of baseball and softball are very strategic. Not everybody realizes that, but it does take a good amount of skill to really understand what is going on during the game at all times. That transcends into what we think makes for a very strong student in high school and helps students develop some skills they can bring into college.
Q. How have you seen the popularity of baseball and softball change?
A. It has grown tremendously. This year we fielded about 100 teams, between baseball and softball. That makes close to 1,400 children playing, between the ages of 5 and 18. While we’re proud of that, we recognize that we happen to be in a good geographic location. So what we have worked on as a board is to develop the league and make it as strong as it can be to support that number of children.
Q. How do you hope to improve the league?
A. Baseball and softball season has some competing sports, which we think is great. We’re very much a big fan of children having the opportunity to play more than one sport. Once kids get to 12 or 13, we really begin to see a drop in participants. Our biggest focus in the future is building a very strong program from the ages of 13 to 18 for our baseball and softball players with a very good focus on preparing that age group to be successful in their high school and college playing careers. We’ve got all the facilities right here at our fingertips.
Q. What are the challenges of managing a successful baseball league?
A. What we do here really comes down to volunteerism. That will always be the biggest challenge, to have a big enough group of volunteers. It’s a year-round program. We have 100 teams this year and that takes 100 head coaches who volunteer and, beyond that, it takes 100 assistant coaches and maybe 100 second assistant coaches. Most of our games have umpires or people who help with the fields. At the end of the day, that’s what we are all about: volunteering.
