Anyone with any little ones out there interested in playing baseball this coming spring and summer in the southern part of the county can register with Kemmerer Little League through this Saturday at Kemmererlittleleague.com with the season hopefully beginning in the first week of May. Nic Housley is the president of the league and he was kind enough to call into the studio last Friday to discuss the league outlook with Duke and Aaron during First Bank of Wyoming Sports Friday.
There are both a majors and minors leagues with the 11 and 12 year olds playing in the majors league with the occasional 10 year old being able to come up if the coaches feel they are ready for it. The key difference between the 2 leagues for the most part not just being age of athletes but also with the majors tending to be player pitch while the minors games can be pitched by player pitch if a team thinks they have a pitcher who can consistently get the ball over the plate or if need be a pitching machine is often implemented to assist the batters to get some quality work in during the games.
As is the case with a lot of sports these days in the state of Wyoming, the officiating shortage is also a hurdle the league has been dealing with as umpires are always in demand for the league, Nic states that they tend to pay the umpires on a per game basis and pay for the umpire training and often get donations from people or businesses to feed the players and umpires after games for free. Umpires are informed that if they can do a full 3 games per week that is the standard level of time commitment asked for by the league but Housley knows some schedules are just busy and if anyone is willing to volunteer their time for any games that they think they would be willing to take on any and all help ensuring the games can all be played as scheduled without a hitch for the kids is appreciated.
This season Cokeville has also been added into the mix as not only can kids from the Cokeville area sign up to play but will be fielding their own set of local teams as well who will play with the rest of the league in Kemmerer and Housley is hoping that perhaps this could lead to even more growth in the league in the future as anyone within the league boundaries which includes most of Star Valley are eligible to sign up for league play and if enough players from the valley join it is possible that a future growth into getting some teams based in Star Valley could potentially be on queue for the future. League registration opened up on march 1st and concludes this Saturday April 15th but it is kept open a little later but the preference is that registration be completed by the 15th and there will be an in-person sign up event at Canyon Elementary School at 5pm tomorrow, Thursday the 13th.
The full interview can be heard below:
