Who will the club cater for?
Baseball started in Sydney with a winter league over 100 years ago for cricketers to play in the off season with many Australian cricket legends playing the game. Waverley was one of the foundation clubs but now the only clubs near the eastern suburbs play at Alexandria and Daceyville (La Perouse) with away games in Hornsby or Cronulla. We want to make this inclusive global game available to everyone in the Sydney area.
How will the club run – weekly competition, social games, training days, etc.?
Initially we will start with the Raskulls, an under 7s non-competitive league with four teams, one night [Friday] per week during Daylight Savings Time. The theme is “transition from playground to sports field”. The teams will have drills that have been modified to be fun games as well as some of the old traditional kindergarten favourites like team jump rope and the Hokey Pokey. The evening will be split in two with a meal break after the drills session, then a round robin tournament where there are no “outs” and players receive points for small achievements. Each Raskull team will have an adult coach and a junior coach/mentor who will be on the field with them directing traffic. As the players achieve skill competency they will be awarded badges to instill a sense of achievement and self esteem. We encourage families to bring a picnic and make a social event of it. If numbers are sufficient in this first year we will start a Saturday league for under 9s and grow the league from there.
How do you cater the game to younger players?
The Raskulls will be starting the drill games with Velcro hand pads so the players can build up skill at just getting their non-dominant hand in the right place rather than needing to close a glove. That comes later. Drill bats are larger modified foam versions swinging at larger balls so the kids can concentrate on just swinging the bat fast and hard rather than using a smaller, heavier bat with a smaller game ball where eye-hand co-ordination can be testing for the younger player.
Later we will approach schools to field teams and/or engage players for older competitions with a HCBL structure that will not require individual teams to form a club just to play. In a year or so we will start representative teams to field teams in the state league. The best local under 13s rep teams in the state now play off in the nationals where the winning team gets to represent Australia in the World Series Little League in the USA. This is the inaugural year of Australia’s inclusion with Perth Central flying off in few weeks. I want to see NSW send a team in the next few years.
Baseball NSW has given us the green light to run a statewide Indigenous knock-out competition which we will explore after bedding down the local league.
