LYB, LGSA merge to form new Lebanon baseball, softball umbrella

Jun. 10—Lebanon Youth Baseball and Lebanon Girls Softball Association are merging to form one umbrella for youth sports in the city, it was announced this week.

The two leagues are now officially known as Lebanon Youth Baseball and Softball Association, LGSA vice president Wayne Oakley said Thursday.

The merger continues a trend of consolidating youth sports leagues in Lebanon from what was once two separate Little Leagues, a former Babe Ruth league and a T-ball league previously run by the city into one banner with girls' softball now joining.

The LGSA has 230 players this season covering five age divisions from age 3-14. Oakley said the league had 260-280 before COVID.

Lebanon Youth Baseball president/board chairman John Pope said LYB has almost 1,000 players across 63 teams, a record for the decade-old organization, from age 5 T-ball to age 15 senior league.

Youth baseball in Lebanon dates back to 1955 when the Kiwanis Club was granted a Little League charter and the Lions Club a Babe Ruth charter to play in the newly-constructed Baird Park, which had just a couple of fields. The Optimist Club started a second Little League in the early 1960s with players assigned to a league based originally on their address and later on their birth month. The Optimist Club petered out, but president Bob Pack kept the league going and eventually moved it from Little League to Dixie Youth in the 1990s. When Pack stepped down in 2001, the Rotary Club took over and moved the league to Dixie Youth's O-Zone division with fields larger than Little League's but smaller than for the older Babe Ruth teams, which helped adjust players from playing on 60-foot diamonds in Little League to 90 feet in Babe Ruth and beyond.

Lebanon Youth Baseball was formed in the fall of 2012 to merge the leagues which continued to play in the same Little League or Dixie Youth. Younger T-ball and coach-pitch leagues were added to each brand. The senior league for ages 13-15 replaced the Babe Ruth league which closed down prior to the 2020 pandemic due to a decreasing number of players as travel ball teams increased. The new senior league, which began in '22 and operates under the Little League banner, plays on the former Babe Ruth Charles Eskew Field and the newer Veterans Field, which was the home for the Lebanon High Blue Devils before the school moved to the South Hartmann Drive campus and the new Brent Foster Field in 2012.

LGSA began in 1983, according to Oakley, and has never been affiliated with a civic organization. The league began with one field behind the old Southside Baptist Church before an adjacent field was added within a few years. Lebanon High School's softball team, which began play in '82, used one of those fields for much of its history until the new campus was built. In 2000, the league moved to a three-field cluster in the southeast corner of the park with access from Cainsville Road while its previous fields were transitioned to baseball.

Pope said the past mergers helped all the leagues and anticipates the addition of softball will as well.

"I look back at what it did when we merged Kiwanis and Rotary," he said. "It made us stronger as an organization, stronger as a league. That's when we started winning state titles at the 11-12 age. We started getting to the state tournaments at coach-pitch 9-10. I think we'll have a similar effect with this in that we will all be stronger together and we'll be able to collectively work toward the goals of improving and developing more and more players, whether it's the girls or the boys. We've always wanted to be a vertical program for the middle schools and high schools. Coming together will just help strengthen that goal.

"It streamlines it in a lot of ways, especially in an organizational standpoint, and even from the players' standpoint and the parents' standpoint. Especially in the last few years from people moving in from out of state, they don't even know where to turn. Now they have a girls' softball player or a boys' baseball player, they're going to go to the same umbrella for all of that from T-ball all the way to 15-16-years old. From that standpoint, it's going to be easier for the parent, the consumer, to know where to go. From an internal standpoint, it'll make us stronger from top to bottom as an organization."

Oakley said a main benefit will be girls will no longer have to pay to play softball, just as boys (as well as some girls) haven't paid to play baseball in the spring. Players will still have to play during the fall season, when there are fewer kids. He added LGSA players will have access to the indoor facility LYB built years ago.

It will have to be expanded, he and Pope said. Ironically, Pope said Oakley, an architect by trade, helped design the hitting facility prior to its original construction.

Oakley said the merger will help make it more fair financially for girls' softball.

"The main thing is why should a female have to play in the spring when the young males do not," Oakley said, noting one family in his league has to pay around $400 for four players in the spring and another $200 in the fall. "We have a lot of families ask that question every year.

"Now's the time for everybody to join together. It's going to be a win-win for everybody. It's going to provide addition benefits for our players... The families are going to realize an economic savings. With us now being able to have the availability of the indoor hitting facility it's going to greatly improve our players' development."

LYB has sold coupon books for years and has lots of team sponsors, not only on the team names, but on the outfield fences as sources of revenue. LGSA doesn't have as many sponsors, Oakley said.

"To this day, we don't have a true fundraising event," said Oakley, whose league for years held a Saturday playday every season as a fundraiser which, for various reasons including weather, didn't bring in the revenue hoped for.

"Lebanon Youth Baseball is looking at is an addition effort to bring us in and help them with their sales," said Oakley.

"Plugging softball into our existing business model will prove to be better financially for both leagues," said Pope, who noted the league turns a profit from its concession stands, which he said doesn't happen most places, as a revenue raiser joining field and team sponsors and the coupon books, sold for $10 each, featuring local vendors. The county and city also provides money, Pope said.

Oakley said he's been wanting the city to purchase adjacent land along Cainsville Road for his league to add to its three current fields. But he said the city has been focused on the sports complex on Highway 231 South where the construction of soccer fields is underway. Phase 2 of that project involves baseball and softball fields. Pope said there might be enough room at Baird Park for another field or two, but the 231 site is a better option for future expansion as the city's population continues to grow.

"With us joining together maybe we can help push along the development of the baseball/softball field out there at the 231 sports complex," Oakley said. "We'll have a little bit better voice in the community and maybe help get Phase 2 of that development going sooner than later."

"You look at the growth that's continuing to come and will continue to come, eventually we're going to need both parks to facilitate your weeknight-league teams," Pope said. "Within the next five to 10, we're going to need both parks. But 231 will be primarily for weekend travel tournaments which we can help facilitate."

Pope said he's also looking to turf all the Baird Park infields, which he said would make the facility more valuable to local and travel entities.

But closer to now, Oakley said signups for fall ball are available at a new website, lebanontnbaseballsoftball.com, which was to have gone online yesterday.

"At the end of the day, it needed to happen," Pope said. That's the bottom line."