Hesston baseball: shot down in flames

For nearly two decades, there has been a movement to add baseball as a varsity program to Hesston. To say the least, the movement has been more of an uphill trudge through the mud.

But there has been a little bit of progress. The high school now offers baseball as a club sport, with around 20 kids expected to play this year, paying out of their own pockets to get on the diamond.

Clearly, there is an interest among the kids.

The latest proposal for the school board was a co-op, possibly with Haven, with expenses to be paid for privately with no cost to the district.

I decided to go to the meeting and hear the argument for myself.

After nearly 20 years of shooting the program down, surely there would be a well thought out reason.

Not exactly.

I was surprised (shouldn’t have been) to hear the old tired, politically cliché, slippery-slope fallacy.

After all, if you open the door to baseball, how long before you have to deal with—a rowing team?

Unfortunately I didn’t pull rowing out of thin air. This was actually mentioned by a school board member.

Fallacy.

According to the National Federation of State High School Associations’ high school athletics participation survey, baseball is the third most popular boys sport by participating schools, with 15,720 participating schools nationally. That is 1,733 more schools with a varsity baseball team than football.

In Kansas, there are 64 class-4A schools. Hesston, Cheney and Hiawatha are the only three of those 64 who don’t play baseball. In Hesston’s league, the Mid-Central Activities Association (a league in its final year of existence), Hesston, Ellinwood and Sterling are the three out of 12 schools without a baseball team.

Rowing?

Actually, why not?

Why not add boys and girls soccer, girls golf and—even rowing if the interest is there? Adding more opportunities for kids is something to be admired, not scoffed at. It is the very core of the baseball movement in the first place. It is about more opportunities for kids to get a chance to participate.

For kids who aren’t as big and strong as a bull, football might not be the way to go. For kids who aren’t tall or who can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound, basketball is probably out too. But for these kids, a baseball diamond could be a great place to be a productive member of a team. I don’t want to minimize the athletic ability needed to play baseball, because it takes a tremendous amount of ability and dedication. But the game doesn’t necessarily require the same prototype of physical build as the other sports.

After having said all this, there are some good reasons to pass on baseball.

At the heart of the issue is Hesston’s lack of a diamond to play on. A few years ago, a proposal for a multimillion-dollar sports complex was put on the table. The school board was understandably as eager to pull the trigger on a multimillion-dollar complex as it would have been to spend money on a rocket to the moon.

But an elaborate complex is not what the program needs. It would cost an estimated $200,000 to $300,000 to build a diamond.

And you can’t overlook the timing involved. At the moment, every district in the state is in dire monetary straights. Programs are being cut and every opportunity to save is being considered.

Now is simply not the time to be adding anything.

But when will the time be right? You would think that the time would have been good enough at some point during this long fight. But for one reason or the other, it just hasn’t been.

So the baseball players in Hesston will have to continue to hope they will one day be a part of a varsity program. And they will watch another class of dedicated players graduate without having ever experienced varsity baseball.

And so it goes.