The metallic ting of bats striking baseballs on the weekends and in the evenings has returned to Cochrane's ball parks in recent weeks.
With teams kicking off their schedules in late April, the 2022 baseball season is already well underway, according to Cochrane Minor Ball president Corey O'How.
"It’s a big organization and there’s a lot of ball being played night in, night out in Cochrane," said O'How. "I think it’s fun when the kids have people come out and watch them. It’s one of those sports in town that maybe doesn’t get the recognition it deserves, but it’s going to be a good season. It’s still relatively early, and we have another two and a half months of it.”
Cochrane Minor Ball (CMB) oversees approximately 45 teams and nearly 700 players, according to O'How, making it one of the largest sporting organizations in Cochrane behind local hockey and soccer.
He said CMB's players range from U4 up to U16, and the level of competition varies as well. Program options for players include co-ed little league, tee-ball, coach-pitch, minor-major, and softball.
"We also have the Baseball Berta program, which is a more competitive program," he said. "We have 13U and 15U teams in that.”
In terms of hosting tournaments, O'How said spring is typically a quiet time of year, but Cochrane tends to host more out-of-town teams in the summer months.
"Our Baseball Berta program hosts some weekends where teams come from out of town and play us," he said. "Little league is set up with two seasons – they have a spring season which runs May and June, and then they have in the summer a more competitive program which runs from the end of June until the August long weekend.
"In the summer, we do host tournaments through that. There are usually one or two weekends, depending on how many age groups we have involved.”
A continued issue for Cochrane's baseball teams continues to be the lack of local playing facilities. According to O'How, while some new baseball diamonds are in the works, there hasn't been a new diamond built in town in the last decade.
He said local teams tend to play at the Glenbow School baseball diamonds, the Matt Krol Park diamonds, and a few others in Cochrane, such as the Rodeo Grounds diamonds or the Mitford Park diamonds.
"It’s kind of the problem we’ve had over the last few years," he said of the lack of viable baseball diamonds. "The Town has kind of kept saying land is an issue. Obviously, there’s the Horse Creek Sports Park that’s booked, they have some diamonds being built but that’s a couple years away.
"We’re struggling in that way and are turning kids away every year because of it.”
