Parents Open New League For Baseball

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Noah (left) and Jalen Ah Yat are two of the youngsters
registering to play baseball in a new Waimanalo
league. Photo from Lei Ah Yat.

A new youth baseball league is being formed for the 2007 season starting in March for girls and boys ages 5 to 14 from Waimanalo, Kailua and Kaneohe.

“We found that a lot of our youth were leaving to play in other neighborhoods - Kahala, Manoa,” said Lei Ah Yat, secretary of the nascent Windward Warriors Baseball Club.

The league will offer Shetland, Pinto, Mustang, Bronco and Pony divisions, and organizers are seeking coaches, umpires and corporate sponsors to help buy equipment, said Ah Yat. Her sons, Jalen, 6, and Noah, 9, will lose one year of All-Star tournament eligibility because they live outside the Waimanalo boundary of the new league.

The Warriors league aims to instill a sense of pride and community service in its players by taking care of the fields it uses and by having coaches who teach life skills as well as baseball skills. She said the league serves an area with many low-income families and is offering a low $25 deposit fee to make it more affordable.

Ah Yat described an “overwhelming response” from parents and coaches who said they “would help us if we wanted to go forward with the creation of this new league.” A Kaneohe league is also forming, she said.

Both leagues are spinning off from the more than three-decade-old Windward PONY, which is Oahu’s second largest PONY league after Mililani, with about 27 teams (400 players) and 100 coaches and assistants.

Forming the Warriors are parents Ah Yat; her husband, Richard, who serves as player agent; president Hauoli Wong and his wife, Celeste, a secretary; vice president Frank Gaspar Jr. and treasurer John Mook.

Warriors’ organizers will attend a sports council meeting in January to discuss using Waimanalo Beach Park and Azevedo Field, Lei Ah Yat said. “We’re looking to play baseball just in Waimanalo.”

Registration will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Dec. 2 and 16 at Waimanalo Beach Park multi-purpose room. Required are player’s birth certificate, medical card and $25 deposit. Siblings receive $5 discounts on the balance, which can be covered through fundraisers.

For more information, visit www.windwardwarriors.org, email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), or call 375-5303.