Findlay Youth Baseball ready to start season

Mid-July is about the time Gene Bridenstine figured he'd be wrapping up his 21st year as Findlay Youth Baseball president. Turns out, it will likely be his busiest time of the year. "Once the governor (Mike DeWine) came out and put in place that youth sports could start right after Memorial Day, we decided to go ahead and give it a try, see what kind of interest we had," Bridenstine said. "We were pleasantly surprised by the number of kids that still wanted to play baseball, even with a shortened summer season." While stating that "numbers are down a little bit," Bridenstine also said that 280 young baseball players have signed up to play in one of four age divisions offered by Findlay Youth Baseball — PeeWee (coach pitch, ages 5-7), Junior League (8-9), Senior League (10-12) and Major Youth League (13-15). A 12-game 2020 season is scheduled to begin on July 13 and end on August 15. All games will be played at the Marathon Diamonds. Bridenstine said there is more diversity on the FYB rosters this summer. "A lot of communities in the area canceled their (summer) baseball programs, so we opened it up to the whole county." he said. "We've got kids from Carey, Van Buren, McComb. Liberty-Benton has some kids playing. We even got four kids coming in from Lima Shawnee in the upper divisions. "The bottom line is, we wanted to give all kids who wanted to, to have an opportunity to play." Findlay Youth Baseball, via its website, announced on March 19 that it was "suspending all future activities" due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bridenstine wasn't ready to pull the plug on the 2020 season, though. "We were listening to all that was going on," Bridenstine said. "When all this started, we stayed in contact with other recreation leagues in northwest Ohio — Bowling Green, Sylvania, others — to see how they were handling things." When DeWine announced in mid-May that "low-contact or non-contact sports" could resume on May 26 as long as safety guidelines and procedures were followed, Bridenstine quickly outlined a revamped version for the 2020 season. "There are some pretty strict guidelines set forth," Bridenstine said. "They've kind of relaxed those a little bit in recent weeks — initially it was mandated that coaches must wear masks, now they used the word suggested instead of must. "(The requirements) keep evolving and changing daily or weekly as to what we can and can't do. We continue to monitor that and we share that with all of our parents. We're still going to follow social distancing and try to restrict the number of kids in the dugout at one time. "We are an all-volunteer organization, so we rely on our coaches and parents to help us with those things and they do an outstanding job." Bridenstine said the late start may cost the leagues a season-ending tournament. "By going into mid-August we'll be going up against football practice, and we want to give the kids a break before that starts," Bridenstine said. "So, we're not planning on having a season-ending tournament, but we're not ruling it out yet, either." Tournament or not, just getting in a season at all is an accomplishment that, a month or two ago, looked like an impossibility. "We owe it to the kids to try to get them out and get them active and doing things," Bridenstine said. "I can't imagine being a kid who's had their soccer season canceled and then school canceled ... I think everybody wants some normalcy. This way they've got something to look forward to in the summer time."