Softball season has arrived, and the City of Holbrook has slated an all-new co-ed league for citizens to pitch in.
Holbrook Recreation Department Director Louie Baldonado Jr. says city officials selected the softball-variant from a list of eight potential seasonal competitive sports leagues he proposed, which included men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, archery/golf, teen baseball and fast-pitch softball (ages 15 to 18), disc golf, and youth cheerleading/tumbling leagues.
Among projected capital projects, an expanded offering of organized sports and recreational programs was given priority by the city’s mayor and council during its fiscal goal-setting work session in Oct. 2015.
However, Baldonado says that so far only the co-ed softball league has received the city’s clearance for approval, slated for this summer.
“The city would like to provide more activities for youth in the four-to-seven-year-old age bracket, such as the splash pad complex,” he explained.
The recreation director pointed out that during his preparation of the proposal, Holbrook Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Robbie Koerperich had granted Baldonado full use of the District’s various gym facilities, sports equipment, and coaching staff, free of charge, in support the proposed leagues.
“I had Robbie Koerperich call me last week and ask Where are we on that? and I had to tell him that I’m still fighting for it, but it’s not getting funded, it’s not going to go through. And he said That’s really disappointing, because all the high school kids would have had something to do through the summer,” he stated.
Baldonado relates that he has received sharp criticism from citizens who are unhappy with the city’s current selection of competitive sports programs.
“Some citizens came and visited me, and were mad at me, for not having these programs, to which I replied that I can propose them, but I can’t fund them. These programs have to have funding to get off the ground and be successful.”
He quotes another unnamed city resident, a mother of two school-age sons, as having questioned a Holbrook city official on the lack of sports leagues and being told that such a program “wasn’t proposed properly” to city management. He says the citizen’s main concern was having to drive to Winslow for one of her son’s league games, and to Show Low for her second son’s games.
According to Baldonado, he received the commitment of eight individuals to coach each of his proposed leagues, who agreed to a stipend of $2,000 per coach, $16,000 per year for the group, which would have been funded by the city per his plan.
“My proposal was to monitor and evaluate each coach individually, reporting their performance regularly to the city manager, and making them accountable. But, even if we run only three or four of these programs, if they’re coached by volunteers, then you can’t make them accountable,” he commented.
Baldonado believes that the quality of competitive leagues can suffer under the amateur direction of a volunteer coach, potentially discouraging sustained participation.
He also notes that his plan would have positioned Holbrook as one of the only local communities to offer its own competitive archery league, and the second to offer co-ed league volleyball locally, after Show Low. He points out that only a handful of area communities sponsor gymnastic tumbling and acrobatic sports.
“Right now, after five years, we’re on the verge of not being able to self-sustain the volunteer-coached softball league. It’s hard to keep it going because the softballs are so expensive.”
In the meantime, Baldonado says to stay tuned for more details on the city’s softball league sign-up.
