Dear Friends and Families of HTLL,
What a great 2021 season for HTLL and our families! There are many firsts for our league this year. We had our highest enrollment of HTLL players this past year. We are gaining great kids and families from our new territory that has been added from our Little League district. We had more kids play tournament ball than ever before. We had our first Intermediate tournament team play Lower Merion for Sectionals at our beautiful complex. We were able to make several field improvements including sodding both infields and putting new protective fencing for the 2022 season. We built our announcers deck after years of using temporary scaffolding. We were able to put a fresh coat of paint on our snack shack and announcer’s deck. A special thank you goes out to Vince Girondi for his painting expertise and time. We improved our snack bar choices for all to enjoy on Sean Egan’s leadership and Tara Klicks assistance. But most importantly, we were able to offer superb volunteer coaching to our kids of our great league. Our coaches are dedicated, enthusiastic and top-notch volunteers of our community. We can’t thank them enough for their time and dedication to our league. We have some coaches who never seem to leave the complex totally volunteering their time!
We are also adding for the first time paid outside umpires for the Intermediate league for 2022! Many of our volunteer umpires are stepping away and we need to maintain excellent officiating at all levels as expressed in our end of the year survey polls. Thank you Pete and Bob for your organization of our volunteers and junior umps which will continue at the lower divisions.
We are not finished with our improvements to our complex. As we have stated in previous messages to our league, our goal is to get permanent lights for our lower field and hopefully a temporary option for the upper field. We were told by our Township Officials, both the Parks and Recreation Board and our Township Commissioners that they support our Little League to get lights. One of our former Commissioners Andy Lewis was leading the cause. Unfortunately, Andy suddenly passed away and the Township does not have the funds to purchase the lights at this time. Our board was not happy, and we agreed that waiting for the Township to come up with the money was not acceptable.
Therefore, we reached out to our bank to pursue getting a loan to purchase and install the lights in the coming year. We need to have our Township’s support which we hope to have secured from our last months meeting with the Commissioners. This will be the single most expensive purchase our league has ever made, but it’s worth it!
In order to help offset the rising costs of uniforms, equipment, umpires and our Lights campaign, we have decided to increase our registration fees. This was not an easy decision, but it is a necessary decision for our league to maintain the quality and environment that our kids and families have and expect at HTLL. We look forward to a great 2022 season and look forward to seeing you all soon. Happy Holidays to all our HTLL families and friends.
Sincerely,
Jay Field
HTLL President