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16

Mar, 2021

Sutton Little League Introduces Itself to the Board of Selectmen

“First of all, I’d like to Thank the Board of Selectmen for your time tonight. The purpose of appearing before you tonight is to introduce this Board as well as the Town of Sutton to Sutton Little League. While the return of Little League to Sutton after almost a 30 year absence occurred in 2020, the pandemic hindered our ability to properly introduce our youth baseball organization to the community. Fortunately though, District 5 Little League did have a 2020 Spring/Summer season along with a full Fall Season with zero player Covid 19 cases. In addition, Sutton’s participation in league and tournament play was a resounding success.

Briefly, I’d like to share with you the WHO, WHAT and WHY of our youth baseball organization. Sutton Little League Inc, is a 501C3 Little League charted organization participating in a District 5 with 16 other local towns. Our organization was founded by a group of dedicated parents that have been involved with youth baseball as well as other youth sports in town for 10 years. The term “sweat equity” was used in a prior meeting and our group certainly has earned this over the years in youth baseball. A majority of our current Board coached, ran clinics and in fact one member served on the board for Sutton Youth Baseball for a very brief time. We were a group that passionately supported youth baseball with our time, effort and money.

Why did we re-start Little League in Sutton? Because of our involvement we realized that the youth baseball experience in Sutton needed to be improved. We presented ideas and solutions along with a commitment to implement these solutions but it was rejected by SYBL. Why Little League then? From our many years of experience and research we concluded that Little League was the first step towards improving youth baseball in Sutton. Quite simply, the facts are this:

Little League rules are much better suited towards youth player development when compared to Cal Ripken.
Little League International is the largest and longest running youth sports organization here in the US. Locally, District 5 has 16 other towns with teams at each age level for inter town play. Ripken currently offers 5 or 6 towns in their region.
Little League District 5 has 5 NON ALL Star tournaments along with the world famous Williamsport All Star tournament. The opportunity for this type of game in non All Star tournaments is a wonderful experience for each player. We were able to participate in the District 5 Connie Mack tournament last year for the first time and the team had a blast.

As part of our introduction we also want to set the record straight with some additional information and facts. We are an Inclusive organization that welcomes any youth player wishing to participate. We are not an All Star group or an AAU team. When we first started this process, the local league boundry included both Sutton and Millbury. Last February when we launched our Millbury-Sutton Little League we created a new email address for this entity which then resulted in this announcement ending up in spam boxes more often than the intended Inboxes. In addition, Millbury Little League was contacted by a Sutton resident with the sole purpose of preventing any youth from Sutton playing in Millbury Little League. As a result of this, we ended up approaching Little League International about re-activating the old Sutton Little League charter. Little League was very helpful and supportive and we ended up deciding to form a new charter for Little League in Sutton. This is despite another attempt by an individual from Sutton placing a call to Little League HQ in Williamsport to again derail our attempt to play Little League. Fortunately, we were able to perceiver. Along with the support of a loyal and dedicated membership we received our charter for Little League baseball and we had both a robust and successful Summer and Fall schedule.

Each member of our Board has commented on how we wish we had done this 5 years ago. Our wish is for the next generation of youth in Sutton to experience the great baseball atmosphere that we enjoyed in 2020. In order to do this, ego’s and animosity must be checked at the door. We have been willing to do this and in fact have approached Sutton Youth Baseball on numerous occasions to discuss a unified, cohesive youth baseball program in Sutton under District 5 Little League. We are willing to merge members of their Board onto our Little League Board so that all will have a voice in moving forward. There is still much work to be done to continue to improve the baseball experience here in Sutton. Publicly and before the community, I ask again that Sutton Youth Baseball sit down with us to form an even stronger Sutton Little League program. We also ask that this Board of Selectmen support us equally as they would any other non profit youth sports program here in Sutton.

Thank you.”