By JARROD POTTER
PUMA pride will extend to summertime with Pakenham Pumas Baseball Club’s latest announcement.
The club, founded in 2000, will join the Victorian Summer Baseball League (VSBL) taking the next step in the club’s development.
Pakenham will make the leap to baseball all-year round, up from its current winter-only alignment with the Dandenong Baseball League, and hopes to enter two teams into the 2015/16 VSBL Division-3 competition.
Pumas President James Kinsella was thrilled to see the club take the next big step in its history and believes a strong base of winter players will also form the core of their summer team.
“We’re really looking forward to summer,” Kinsella said.
“Obviously we’ve got a strong base to build on from winter and we’ve got a lot of guys who play winter and don’t want to go anywhere else to play summer.
“Now is really a great time to do it – we’ve built up a solid base, our committee has done a really good job of getting the club to where it is in winter and we think we now have the committee and team in place and that we can support a summer side.
“We’ve built a really great team culture and people just want to be a part of that.”
Getting the next generation into the Pakenham colours was another crucial factor for Kinsella and the Pumas committee to making the shift to year-round baseball.
“I think it’s really important – the main thing is we want to focus on getting more kids into baseball and maybe summer will help with that,” Kinsella said.
“Better weather and a more important season for baseball traditionally.”
The Pumas hope the addition of summer baseball will help generate more interest from the Cardinia Shire Council to help overhaul their current Toomuc Reserve facilities – currently shared by the Pakenham Little Athletics Club.
“We think that summer will help us get those facilities – possibly we’ll run at a loss and it will be a tough season from a committee perspective, but we think it’s the next step for the club and get us where we need to be, to get some more facilities,” Kinsella said.
Pakenham Pumas will host three ‘Come and Try Days’ this month at Toomuc Reserve, held on Saturday 14, 21 and 28 February from 9am to 1pm.
