WESTWOOD SUMMER BASEBALL – GENERAL INFORMATION
Westwood Summer Baseball has a goal of around 30 games after rainouts over 7 to 8 weeks from June to mid-July. Incoming freshmen have tryouts in the latter part of April where current players form summer JV and Varsity teams at the beginning of May. Practices typically start in late May. The fee has not exceeded $500 but may be increased this summer due to higher umpire and coaching costs. The fee includes games, practices, two uniform shirts and excellent coaching. Coaches are former Westwood players who know the system and typically continue their baseball careers beyond high school. The fee also includes field costs, baseballs, umpires, and insurance. This is still considered a good deal given the number of games and practices where outside select programs could cost several times more. In addition to Westwood hosting its own tournaments the summer teams have mixed in a few select tournaments with sponsors such as Perfect Game, USSSA, and Super Series.
Coach Bratcher encourages players to maintain their baseball skills over the summer; but it is each player’s choice whether to play Westwood Summer Baseball, or whether to play with a select team. There are no consequences or benefits for either decision.
Westwood Summer Baseball works with the families and players schedules and is flexible with conflicts. The summer season is short though so players are encouraged to minimize the amount of time that are away. Summer players will need to provide the dates they are away to the summer coordinator a.s.a.p. so that the summer schedule can be worked out to make sure enough players are available for games and tournaments.
WESTWOOD SUMMER BASEBALL 2007 REPORT
The rains did not stop the two summer teams from reaching their goal of 30+ games.
The varsity summer team played 32 games while the incoming freshmen team had a whopping 37 games. Both teams sponsored their own tournaments, played in other area high school tournaments and participated in select Perfect Game tournaments. In addition to tournaments the summer teams kept busy with a number of weekday games. The rains kept us all guessing at times, but both teams were fortunate to have very few games cancelled in reaching their goal of over 30 games each.
Westwood Summer Baseball had a very successful summer season with great parent support, coaching, planning and the multitude of efforts required to pull off the number of games played, stay within budget, and coordinate with the Austin area high schools.
The Varsity Summer Team:
Players:
Chris Boerner, Cody Brasher, Stephen Bratcher, Josh Caldwell, Alex Freeman, Tanner Hogue, Harrison Johnson, Steven Kanik, Sean Kelly, Kye Martin, Stanford Martinez, Urbane Martinez, Wes Miller, Matt Molina, Ross Van Eaton.
Summer Coaches:
Craig Noel, Bill Mitchell, Ben Graham.
Parent Support:
Summer Coordinator – Mike Boerner
Varsity Coordinator – Mike Boerner
Concession Stand Coordinator – Tim Kelly
Scoreboard Coordinator – Chris Freeman
Umpire Coordinator (both teams) – Kirk Caldwell
Mr. Propane (both teams) – Bill Kanik
All of the parents did an outstanding job covering concession stand duties, scoreboard, scorebook, and field maintenance before and between games, and the other duties such as the not-so-glorious-but-all-important taking out the trash. An extra honorable mention goes out to:
* Steve Johnson for extra field work, scoreboard, grill, trash, and just doing it all.
* Mary Kay Schwartz for extra concession work, teenager list, and keeping us in line.
* Kirk Caldwell for all the extra field work and providing those umpires on short notice.
* Chris Freeman for the incredible array of songs in between innings.
* Stanford Martinez for providing his amplifier for the scorebooth after the baseball amplifier was stolen.
* Tim Kelly for concession oversight and innovative items to sell including hot pockets.
* Bill Kanik for keeping the scorebook and for making sure the grill had gas.
* The concession stand buyers who bought most of the concession stand supplies over the summer for both teams.
THANKS TO EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU FOR MAKING THIS A SUCCESSFUL SUMMER.
The Freshmen Summer Team:
Players:
Jake Balog, Garrett Benyo, Vincent Cipriano, Colton Conrad, Zach Crawford, Ryan Dandignac, Grant Dixon, Adam Harmon, Will Harper, Austin Lee, Matthew Litz, Steven Pauda, Ian Pirich, Matthew Schmerber.
Summer Coaches:
Jon Masch and Matt Aubrey
Parent Support:
Freshmen Coordinator – Michelle Litz
Concession Coordinator – Sue Benyo
Scoreboard Coordinator – Wayne Conrad
Official Team Historian – Kathleen Pirich
This freshmen team had an incredible amount of energy to play baseball and the parents matched them in their support. Honorable mention for going above the call of duty goes out to:
* Sue Benyo for concession stand oversight and handling extra concession stand duty.
Michelle Litz for energetic team coordination and also extra concession stand duty.
* Wayne Conrad for scoreboard oversight and a lot of extra field duty to make the fields playable despite all the rain.
* Susan Dixon for scorebook and extra scoreboard duty.
* Kathleen Pirich for being the official team historian where she documented every game through her non-stop picture taking and made sure every player and coach had great memories of a super season where she made the pictures available on a website.
* Sue Benyo, Michelle Litz, and the freshmen parents for taking on the varsity challenge to exceed the varsity record breaking gross concession sales of $700 for their varsity tournament. The freshmen parents responded well to that challenge by setting a new record of gross concession sales of $1200 for their freshmen tournament weekend. This competition helped to build the budget back to a little more than its beginning balance.
THANKS TO EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU FOR MAKING THIS A SUCCESSFUL SUMMER.
Westwood’s Coordination Role in Austin Area Summer Baseball
Efforts to have a successful summer season actually began in February when the Westwood Summer Baseball repeated the previous year’s effort to build a contact list of area high school summer coordinators. This effort resulted in a contact list involving 57 teams representing over 32 area high schools. This was similar to the list the summer before which had about 60 teams representing about 30 area high schools. This contact list was used by Westwood and all area summer teams to set up weekday games, tournaments, and provide coordination between teams for these games, rescheduling, and rainouts. Westwood held a May 7th meeting with these area high schools to set the Austin Area High School summer baseball in motion. After the May 7th meeting Westwood Summer Baseball generated a 164 weekday game schedule for June to get games started for the area schools. These 32 area teams then added many more weekday games on their own by using the contact list. Westwood Summer Baseball sent emails to these area high school teams throughout the summer to provide the latest high school tournaments and teams involved. Westwood’s communication efforts to provide the contact list, weekday schedule, and current tournaments helped all the area schools involved, including Westwood, to produce an estimated 400 or more games for the Austin area high school summer teams. The area high school teams were very appreciative of Westwood’s role and expressed interest in continuing their participation in the Austin Area Summer Baseball games and tournaments in the future with this type of coordination.