A sunny Saturday morning was met with a successful start to the season for Cochrane Minor Ball (CMB). More than 100 volunteers turned up for the first annual ball diamond cleanup to rake leaves, pick up garbage and ensure Cochrane diamonds are up to pitch, rather par. "This was our first annual diamond cleanup and we weren't sure if people would even show up, and we ended up having a great turnout," said Kayley MacLennan, CMB admin and operations coordinator. "This helped speed up the process to open the diamonds," she explained, adding that the season had been delayed by one week by the town due to the ground saturation, but some dry weather this week could move that up a couple of days. The turnout may speak to the club growth. With 625 players ranging from ages three and 18 years (including softball), CMB had to implement a cap this year, which they reached, due to a shortage of playing fields. Within the Town of Cochrane, there are two diamonds at Mitford Park, two at the rodeo grounds, two at Glenbow School, two in Riverview at Matt Krol Park and one in each GlenEagles, Bow Ridge, Sunset and Fireside. Less than half of these diamonds meet specifications for older kids and travel leagues. Senior kids teams can only play at the south rodeo location, due to diamond dimension specifications. The developer-built diamonds in Sunset and Fireside were built too small and are without fencing - rendering them only usable for ages 10 and under. Last year the town fenced the GlenEagles ball diamond, which enables older kids teams to play on this diamond. "Our dream would be to find some land and build a quad diamond like Airdrie," said MacLennan, who said a build of this sort would accommodate all ages, all divisions and leagues of play. It would also bring tourist dollars to town. This is the first year that CMB has had a dedicated fundraising coordinator and McLennan said this will allow the organization to go after grant dollars that could open up opportunities for future land acquisition and ongoing needs. "Our goal is to keep our fees as low as possible," she said, adding that even with an increase to older kids team fees this year, CMB continues to be among the lowest fees in the Calgary area. The increase in T-Ball players and the addition of Blast Ball for ages 3-4 have softened the fee increases for older ages. Last year CMB raised $11,918. Major fundraising initiatives this season include a raffle for two roundtrip WestJet tickets. There is a fundraiser this Saturday, May 5 at the Cochrane Movie House at 9:30 a.m to view the Avengers: Infinity War. Tickets are available through [email protected] or at the door. There will be a second movie showing Incredibles 2 at the Cochrane Movie House on June 17, which must be pre-booked via email. This year, CMB had to fork out funds to replace all its aluminum bats with wooden bats, as per new USA Baseball Bat Standards. "Our whole division has moved to wooden bats because aluminum bats were dangerous and kids were getting hurt," explained MacLennan. The price tag on this was $3,500, in addition to replacing the metal equipment boxes at the ball diamonds for a cost of $700 each (total of $2,100) due to broken welds on the units. "Canadian Tire donated all of our balls this year for baseball and softball, which was a massive savings for us," she said, adding that they bought new jerseys for some teams this year, as well as sound-making first base pads for the Blast Ball league. MacLennon said CMB has good working relationships with the Town of Cochrane and with Cochrane Slo-Pitch (men's and mixed adult leagues) who have graciously adjusted their schedules to help with CMB's diamond shortage. New this year is a summer baseball league for competition players aged ten and up. Registration for this league is now open. Learn more at cochraneminorball.ca.
