By Greg Bates
Correspondent
HOWARD – Every offseason, the girls who played in the Bay Port softball program never had a place to hit from a batting cage, do tee work or have pitchers perfecting their craft.
For a long time, it had been the vision of Pirate Fastpitch Inc. and its president Eric Baranczyk, to have a place for the program to call its own.
Through hard work and fundraising, that dream came true.
In February of this year, a 4,800-square-foot facility was opened at 1640 Brookfield Ave., and is the home of Pirate Fastpitch.
“It’s been tremendous,” Baranczyk said. “We’ve tripled the opportunity for our kids to practice. We’re expecting great things in the future because of the number of repetitions and opportunities they get.”
The facility is primarily used to train girls ages 7 to 18 in the program.
The athletes have plenty of room for hitting, pitching and strength and conditioning.
“As an organization, it’s awesome,” said Jared VandenBranden, who is a 12U coach in the program and the 12U representative on the Pirate Fastpitch board. “I think there are a lot of people in the area who are jealous we were able to put it together.”
VandenBranden said there aren’t any other softball programs in the Green Bay area which have a facility similar to this one.
“The problem we’ve had to worry about every year was, where are we going to hit in the offseason?” VandenBranden said. “Where are we going to find space to play? Last year at this time, we were filling a garage unit off of Deerfield where we had one cage. If you had more than about eight kids in there, you were worried someone was going to get hit – it was dangerous.”
Before the facility was built, the players would have to jockey with other sports at Bay Port in order to get time in the high school gymnasium to practice on a Sunday night.
“One of the reasons we had to do it was because there is limited space available in our community,” Baranczyk said. “A lot of families would have to go to other communities to practice and pay an exorbitant amount of money. By doing fundraising, we were able to keep the fees low for our families and give them a place for only girls to go and practice softball.”
According to Baranczyk, parents would typically have to spend between $2,000-2,500 annually for their daughter to get training and an opportunity to play at a facility.
The athletes competing through Pirate Fastpitch are paying $500 per year – scholarships are available for families that can’t afford the annual fee.
The money covers such things as rent for the facility, tournament entry fees and equipment.
The facility was built by Ron and Joan Sinclair – who have a daughter in the program – from Sinclair Construction.
It was agreed upon that Pirate Fastpitch would rent the facility with the plans of outright buying it down the line.
Pirate Fastpitch, which is a nonprofit organization, is in search of sponsors and someone to purchase naming rights of the facility to help foot the bills and get the mortgage paid off.
“We need to partner with one or several other entities that can help us and keep the cost down,” Baranczyk said. “Pirate Fastpitch is about building softball players for our Howard-Suamico School District and Bay Port High School.”
Even though the facility opened six months ago, VandenBranden has already watched some of his players improve because of their extra work at the facility.
“We’ve seen an exponential difference in our kids with their hitting ability,” VandenBranden said. “It’s amazing how much better they have gotten. They can see the ball better. They can pick it up and they know when they’ve made a mistake versus they can’t even touch the ball. They’re swinging at strikes now, and it’s a huge difference. It’s because we are able to put the reps in.”
The facility, which has three batting cages, is available to any player in the program at any time of the year.
“Even while they’re playing other sports, they can go pick up a bat on a Saturday afternoon and go take some cuts,” said Baranczyk.
Baranczyk and VandenBranden are hoping to expand the facility sometime down the line and help Bay Port softball reach new heights.
“This younger age, as we bring them up to the high school level, the ultimate goal would be a state title,” VandenBranden said. “The judgment zone would be, ‘Can Bay Port softball win a state title?’ We feel starting young and having this facility, that’s the end game.”