Youth baseball league breaks 15-year registration record

Greater Fort Erie Minor Ball signed up nearly 400 players this season, the most the local baseball association has registered in 15 years, and its president says the town will soon need more ball diamonds to keep up with demand.

The association celebrated on Friday with a free home opener festival at Oakes Park, where its 9U and 10U Junior Cannons teams played their first games of the season.

Local chef and television personality Matty Matheson and his wife Patricia became the season’s top sponsor with a $5,000 gift given to the association through their local businesses Blue Goose Farm and Rizzo’s House of Parm.

Kevin Charanduk, the head chef at Rizzo’s, threw the first pitch at the home opener game, and Scottie Jukosky, a 10-year-old from Fort Erie, sang the national anthem.

Ben McDermott, president of the Greater Fort Erie Minor Ball Association, attributes the jump in registrations this year to his new board’s recruiting strategy and the Toronto Blue Jays’ playoff run last fall.

“Baseball is primed to really explode,” said McDermott.

Registration rose from 290 players last season. The association’s T-ball league, for its smallest children, signed up more than 110 players this year, the largest number that age group has ever recorded.

“Hopefully that’s the next generation of players that we can keep playing year over year, which will help us build this program,” said McDermott.

The biggest obstacle holding the program back is field space. Fort Erie lost several baseball diamonds in the early 2000s when enrollment declined and soccer grew in popularity.

But now that baseball is booming again, McDermott said the association will need help from the Town of Fort Erie to add more.

“The one thing that we’re going to need to do in this community is to work with the town to get more baseball diamonds,” said McDermott.

McDermott hopes for baseball to return as Fort Erie’s main summer sport, a level he compares to the more than 1,000 children he says played locally when he was young.

“If we get to 1,000 kids, this park is not going to be enough,” said McDermott.

The Town of Fort Erie has partnered with the association for years and knows its plans to grow, McDermott said, and the two sides have discussed where they might build more fields together.

Longtime volunteers Mike and Kathy Foster retired after 30 years, taking decades of know-how with them, and a new 12-member board came together in March to keep the program going.

“Without the 12 members of our board stepping in and hitting the ground running and doing everything we needed to do in a short period of time to pull off this season, we wouldn’t be talking here right now,” said McDermott.

Greater Fort Erie Minor Ball offers baseball in three categories for players aged 5 to 18: house league for local play, an interlock schedule that matches teams against other Niagara towns by age group, and rep travel teams that compete under the Junior Cannons name.

The association plans to hold an early registration event this fall so it can form teams sooner, save late spots for families who sign up in March, and keep more Fort Erie children from leaving for programs in Port Colborne or Niagara Falls.

Registration closes each spring once the association orders jerseys and sets its rosters.

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