Breathing life back into baseball: Riverhead Little League has new president and new direction

With enrollment slipping and almost no money in the bank before the spring season, Riverhead Little League’s new president is making some changes.

Scott Wicklund takes over as president this season following Tony Sammartano’s retirement from the position after 15 years, and now he’s looking for ways to breathe some life back into the struggling Little League.

“Tony’s done a great job,” Wicklund said today. “Now I have the chance to look at things with a fresh pair of eyes, see what worked in the past and figure out what changes I think might help the league going forward.”

One of those changes is cutting registration fees across the board to encourage more families to enroll their children in Little League.

“It’s gotten a little expensive,” Wicklund said. “With kids playing so many different sports these days, between lacrosse and soccer and baseball and all these other expenses, parents are starting to have to pick and choose.”

Registration this year will cost about $30 less in every division. The price to play t-ball has dropped from $80 to $50, majors from $150 to $120, and so on.

But if Riverhead Little League is going to thrive again, it needs to find ways to bring in more funds, especially to offset this season’s price cut. “Right now we have no money,” Wicklund said. “We’re strapped.”

One way he hopes to do that is by bringing in more sponsorships from local businesses.

Once a significant source of donations for the league, sponsorships have dropped off in recent years, especially after uniforms and team names were changed to Major League baseball teams instead of the local businesses that sponsors each individual team.

“We seem to have gotten away from supporting the local businesses that we need to support our league over the past couple years,” Wicklund said. “If we’re going to survive, we need to have sponsors.”

So this year, the league will return to the its old style of uniforms and team names, featuring each team’s sponsor on the baseball cap and uniform.

“It’s great that the kids get to wear jerseys for the Yankees or Mets, but they already have their fan bases built in because they’re Major League baseball teams,” Wicklund said. “I want to go back to giving more recognition to the local businesses that I need to come back to us if this league is going to be successful.”

He hopes that switching team names and uniforms back to promoting local businesses will create more incentive for them to sponsor teams again.

But Wicklund does not want to rely on sponsorships alone. For the past few months, he and the league’s board – which also has many new faces this year – have been brainstorming other ways to raise money.

It may be several months before the season starts, but they are harder at work now planning fundraisers than they will be in the spring when the first ball is thrown over the plate.

The league has already held a fundraiser at Wendy’s on Route 58 earlier this week, and they’re planning a pancake breakfast at Applebee’s in the spring. Registration night will also be held at Wendy’s this year, and a portion of all food sales that night will be donated back to Riverhead Little League. On opening day, a silent auction will be held to raffle off baskets from each team.

“We’re trying as many different ways as we can to raise funds,” Wicklund said. “We need to get the league back financially to where it should be.”

But though there may be many costs to running a Little League, from paying the umpire association to putting a down payment on uniforms, Wicklund says that money is just a secondary concern for the board.

“We’re not in the business of making money,” he said. “We’re supposed to be making memories with the kids playing ball. That’s what it all comes back to.”

Wicklund has been with Riverhead Little League since 1998, when he started coaching his son on the Riverhead Police Benevolence Association team (Wicklund is also a Riverhead police officer).

When his daughter was old enough to play, he started coaching softball too.

“I’ve coached teams that started off in t-ball and brought them all the way up to the majors,” he said. “It’s very rewarding to see them progress to that level and develop those skills.”

Little League, he added, is a distinctly American pastime that almost everyone has had some interaction with. “Everyone has played Little League,” he said. “No matter where you grow up in the United States, everyone has played it. It’s an institution.”

Coaching for more than 15 years has meant that Wicklund has even gotten to coach the children of some of his former players. “I’m very lucky that I’m able to volunteer my time in the town that I live in,” he said.

Wicklund gave up coaching last season, but he remained on the league’s board, which he joined three years ago. And this year, he will take the helm as the league’s president, where he hopes to introduce even more kids to the classic sport.

“It’s all about the love of the game,” he said. “Most kids stop playing when they turn 11 or 12, but if I can get them to enjoy the game, even when they’re done with Little League, then I’ve done my job.

“As long as the kids are having fun, they’re going to come back and play,” he said.