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Sports

Route 84 league doesn't let the summer sun set on youth baseball

A Southbury man spearheaded the Route 84 baseball league that bring competitive play to local youth throughout the summer

For four years, Chris DeWitt of Southbury, his daughter Jennifer and parents and coaches from towns along the Interstate 84 corridor in Western Connecticut have kept baseball dreams alive for local players long past the end of the Little League Baseball and Cal Ripken Baseball regular seasons.

DeWitt is president and a founding member of the Route 84 Summer Baseball League, a travel baseball league for 'B-teams' in towns along Interstate 84. The league gives players ages 9 to 12-years-old not on a Little League or Cal Ripken all-star team a chance to play competitive baseball in a structured league from May to June. The league is currently in the midst of its championship tournaments.

"This league, if you will, is for the kids who are the [13th]-through-25th-best in their town who didn't make the all-star team or didn't want to play in their league's all-star tournaments because the schedule was too demanding for their families," DeWitt said. "These B-teams teams are competitive teams and generally hold tryouts, but the league has a more flexible schedule for parents and kids while still offering a competitive environment with an organized structure, a website for standings and schedules and a rules package."

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Jennifer DeWitt is the driving force behind the league's structure. She started out organizing the distribution of the league's commemorative T-shirts three years ago and is now the league's administrator, managing the website for results and schedule postings.

What started with an idea to give local youth players an outlet for summer baseball that is close to home has grown into a popular and sought-after league for teams as far as Pound Ridge, New York and Shepaug.

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In 2002, Chris DeWitt's son, Greg — though a member of the all start team —still wanted to play baseball during the summer. Chris DeWitt heard about a league out of New Canaan that welcomed traveling baseball teams and soon became one of many Southbury and Newtown parents who drove an hour or more so their child could play competitive baseball.

When DeWitt's younger son, Steven, wanted to play competitive summer baseball roughly four years later, DeWitt and representatives from Newtown B-teams decided to form a summer league "in their own backyard," DeWitt said. They named the league Route 84 because they wanted it to be for teams along the interstate to make traveling easy.

Limited to just 9-year-olds in its first year, the league started with 20 teams. This year, the league boasts eight divisions with 85 teams. DeWitt estimates more than 1,100 players took part in more than 800 games this season. The divisions are managed by age group leaders from Southbury, Newtown, Bethel, Oxford and Shepaug.

The main reason for the dramatic increase in teams and players this season is that the league formed A-team divisions in each age group to allow district all-stars to compete.

"One of the great things about this league is that this doesn't just involve Cal Ripken or Little League teams," DeWitt said. "These kids get to play with teams and towns that they normally wouldn't have been able to play with because there is no reason for Little League town and Cal Ripken town to ever cross paths.  So this allows for them to come together and face competition that they usually wouldn't face."

The popularity of the Route 84 league has also spawned the I-84 Travel League for 13-to-15-year-old players.

While DeWitt is happy to see the league expand to include A-team players, he said the league's appeal will always be based on the simple notion that children should be able to play baseball if they want to play.

"What the towns in the Route 84 league get is a structure baseball program where not just their 12 of their players are playing all-star baseball," he said. "We are giving towns the opportunity to now have 24 kids playing summer baseball. And in some cases like Newtown and New Milford, they are fielding two teams each so it goes even deeper to 36 or 38 kids. It gives the towns a much deeper organized baseball offering for their kids that are serious about baseball."

For more info, visit www.route84baseball.com or e-mail jen.route84baseball@gmail.com

CORRECTION: The first edition of this article read that Greg DeWitt had not been a member of the all-star team.  In fact he had.  We regret the error.

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