Youth baseball league wraps up another season with strong volunteer support

The California Lanes infielders stand lined up behind the mound.
The California Lanes infielders stand lined up behind the mound.

Instructional and recreational sports leagues can't exist without volunteers.

Two of the coaches who have given much of their time coaching youth baseball in California for the past few years are Bryan Lawson and Ronnie Kissick, and for both of them, coaching at the youth level is about showing the basics of the game, teaching good sportsmanship and above all, making sure the kids have fun.

Lawson coached the T-ball team sponsored by Hawthorne Bank this season. He's coached in the rec leagues for the last four years and has seen things move forward, particularly at the T-ball level.

"The rec league has done a good job of enhancing the games," he said. "It's not competitive, but kids learn more about the game."

Kissick just wrapped up his third year as a rec coach. This season, he coached the Bonnie Plants team in the T-ball division and Diesel Power Plants in the Junior Boys league.

"T-ball is more of the very basics," Kissick said. "It's things like how to hold the bat, throw the ball and run the bases. And with the Juniors we just build and progress of those fundamentals."

Both Lawson and Kissick said the primary time commitment for practices comes before the first game starts. On average, with field use very much in demand, teams practice three of four times prior to the season and then no more than once a week once the games start. T-ball teams often don't hold any additional practices after the first game.

"We watch the kids make progress every single practice," Kissick said. "Our Juniors started off as 11 kids and by the first game they were one team. For T-ball, the best thing is just seeing the expression on the kids faces and seeing the sincere excitement and sense of accomplishment."

While having the small window of summer to coordinate hundreds of local kids into teams that play on just a select number of fields does not make for an ideal system, Lawson thinks the California rec leagues have done a nice job of introducing kids to the game.

"We're fortunate to have a city parks and recreation department that lets us have youth sports," he said. "It sets kids up for success at the junior high and high school level, it lets local kids play and learn the game, and it pays tribute to the community for the support."