Little League Baseball Comes To A&B

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A total of 10 little league baseball teams from across the Caribbean will converge on Antigua in July for the staging of a regional tournament at the Potters playing field.
The tournament, slated to run from July 7-17, will also serve as a qualifier for the Little League World Cup slated for August in the USA.
President of the Antigua & Barbuda Little League Baseball, Adolfo Pena, said that a national team is already in training for the 11-12 age group tournament.
“We have a local coach and professional trainer and the selections are made based on the age group which is 11-12 years old. So from there we have the charter and we got invitation from Wilden sport so in that regard we train the children. Right now we are fine-tuning them at King George playing field for the tournament,” he said.
Little League treasurer, Larry Francis, described the tournament coming to Antigua as an opportunity for the young players to perform in front of their home crowd for the first time against competition from outside the country.
“In Antigua the teams are very small so we don’t get much opportunities to play against other teams. So every year we’ll travel to Puerto Rico and other places to participate in these same types of regional tournaments and some invitational,” he said.
The undertaking, Francis said, is however not inexpensive. He said the Little League has been ably supported by a number of institutions.
“The host country would have to pay for the accommodations and meals for all the participating countries. We have actually solicit some help from the Baptist church in the US; and we got a lot of support from the government here in terms of using some of their facilities so the teams will be staying at the defence force,” he said.
“We’ve gotten the permission to use the School Meals facility to prepare the meals, because you can imagine you have 10 countries coming with 15, 18 or sometimes 20 players and officials; and we’ve gotten transportation to move the teams,” Francis added.
The national training squad continues to prepare for the tournament at the King George V Ground.

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