POULSBO — As a Poulsbo Police reservist, Don Kennedy has spent recent days flagging traffic near Front Street.
Now he’s trying to flag down support — and money — for a Connie Mack baseball team in Poulsbo.
The team would be a select-level team for baseball players ages 16-18 from the North Kitsap area. The team would play in the Connie Mack league, which is the home of several other summer select teams in Washington.
Kennedy, who has been a youth coach for years, thinks now is a good time to get the elite team up and running.
“Now’s the time to do it. We could represent ourselves pretty well,” said Kennedy. He cites the great baseball talent coming out of North Kitsap in recent years, including the Babe Ruth team which reached the World Series one year and the regional tournament the next, as well as all the talent North Kitsap has playing on Seattle-based select teams.
Why send North Kitsap players to Seattle to play on an elite baseball team, Kennedy asks, when one such team could be based here?
Kennedy believes it would cost about $15,000 a year to get the team running — a number he came up with after consulting with other such teams in the Seattle and Port Orchard areas. All of them, he said, cost between $12,000 and $15,000 to run the team, with most of the cost going toward tournament entry fees.
Kennedy believes the team can raise about half the cost from players and their families. He recently approached the City of Poulsbo about funding the other half.
City council members showed interest in having a team, but also expressed concerns about paying several thousand dollars for a team that would have 16 members per year, when that money could go toward programs or field improvements that could benefit more kids. (The community services committee asked for more information on similar programs, especially the program in Moses Lake, which has grown so successful the stadium has become a tourist draw.)
Kennedy understands their concern — and is gathering information on other programs — but also believes the team, once build properly, could benefit more than 16 kids.
He said that team-hosted tournaments could draw tourists and money into North Kitsap, as they do now in Moses Lake and other towns with elite teams.
“People go to Moses Lake for tournaments, and that’s in the middle of eastern Washington,” Kennedy said. “Do you think it’d be hard to attract people to this community for a tournament?”
The most important part of the idea, Kennedy said, is that it’s not his. When he and several young baseball players were watching a Babe Ruth World Series in Moses Lake several years ago, Kennedy said, they asked him why Poulsbo couldn’t have an elite select team for other players.
After watching the hard work and day-to-day practice many of the Babe Ruth players put in, Kennedy is asking the same questions.
“If the kids are willing to make that kind of commitment,” he said, “we should do something for them.”