A little about us and where we originated from.
We started as members Keansburg Babe Ruth League. Our previous President and dear friend, Robert Kistner, was trying to turn a failing league around. He struggled, as all small towns struggle, to get the necessary funds to keep this program successful. His idea was to bring Keansburg Babe Ruth into the 21st century and try to build a long lasting foundation. Unfortunately, Keansburg Babe Ruth was tied with the municipality. There are certain rules that have to be followed. This man was at the fields 24/7, no one worked as hard as Rob did to get those fields looking great.
In 2014, Rob recruited the person who would eventually take the reigns of Keansburg Babe Ruth. Rob also recruited several new members into his board. Rob stepped down as President in 2015, and ushered in the new President, Lou D. Rob stayed around as long as he could before moving to his new home.
As the new President began to look into all aspects of the league, he had a vision; a vision which at first seemed like a far reach. He realized, we were a small town, he realized we were bound to certain rules that must be followed because of Keansburg Babe Ruth being under the umbrella of Keansburg Recreation. A risky and exciting decision was made, and that is to leave Keansburg Recreation's umbrella. This move would open up new avenues, and new opportunities for the league. As this was happening, a second risky and exciting decision was being made. That was the merger of Bayshore Little League with Keansburg Babe Ruth. We knew that Bayshore Little League was not doing so well. Our Keansburg Babe Ruth league was not doing well either, in financial aspects. The goal was not to take it over, but to merge, merge our resources an have a chance for both leagues to work.
Our Baseball Charter has always been Keyport, Union Beach, Keansburg and Middletown. So the merger was a no brainer for the board to decide on. We are now a fully merged baseball league, we have board members from multiple towns. Due to the short noticed and the ball had already started rolling with Keansburg Babe Ruth, the decision was made to keep the name Keansburg Babe Ruth. The charter was changed to Bayshore Babe Ruth League in early 2015, but everything else was associated to Keansburg Babe Ruth.
Our League President was not done, for in 2015, the Board also approved to creating of a new program, that we must say are very proud of. This new program is called "Buddy-Ball", it is offered by Babe Ruth Leagues as "Bambino Buddy-Ball". This program is to target special needs children, and we offered it to ALL neighboring towns. We reached out to HYAL, Matawan, HYAA and everyone who was interested in having an opportunity to have their special need child participate in a baseball activity. Once this program was created, we needed someone to lead this group. As always, the new President was resourceful and already had the person in mind. And When Heather Geiger was offered the directors job for Buddy-Ball and she accepted with a big smile, we all knew she was the right person for this position. She is so passionate about this program, she is truly a blessing to have running this program.
Once the foundation has been established, we of the Bayshore Babe Ruth board reached out to Union Beach and Keansburg Recreations. Both these towns Recreation boards have been helpful to us. Without their help, and their acknowledgement that we are doing something great for the kids, they helped us out. We were allowed to use their fields; we had support as well from them. In 2016, the Keansburg Recreation has made some safety modifications to the St. Johns baseball fields. We like to take this opportunity to acknowledge them for a job well done. We simply look forward to 2017, and hope they have a chance to finish some more upgrades.
Towards the end of the 2015-year, a decision was made to become an actual Recreation. This was truly a risky idea, simply because who knows what would happen. We realized that if we create something like this, we reach out to other leagues and sports struggling for funds to continue. This struggle reminds us of where we came from, reminds us of our previous president struggling to do everything for the kids. Creating a recreation, and not taking over, but being a partnership with other leagues and sports, we can share resources. We realize we pay for the same insurance, background checks, training, social media and website. If we united, and shared our resources, we can help these leagues and sports struggling to stay a float. Or if a parent would like to start a league but didn’t know how to, we would help out to get it started and share our resources. So as of December 2015, we became Bayshore Sports and Recreation.
In December 2015 the Director of Public relations, Billy Pachamango, had the idea of upgrading the technology being used. The goal of the upgrades was to find a way to make registration easier for the league to maintain, an easy way for parents to be able to register, a way that parents can communicate with coaches, get news and updates about the league. This is when we first build our website, that was powered by SI Play. This Website made sense because it offered everything we were looking for, easy way to maintain registration, an easy way for parents to register online, and it introduced the mobile app. The leagues mobile app was great because Coaches were able to communicate with teams via text or chats within the app. The app also had schedules, reminders and asked if you were attending games or practices. This was essential for coaches, in order to determine a lineup for games or run practices without waiting for kids who you know would not attend practice. The 2016 Baseball season's technology was a hit! People liked the idea of the mobile app, everything they need was a click away.
In middle of the 2016 year, we were approached by several people asking us to start a basketball league. The Bayshore Sports and Recreation Commission executive board got together and were able to make quick decisions to get the ball rolling. A great decision was to partner with the Union Beach recreation. They know us from Baseball, and it made sense for us to partner up with each other in order to bring a Bayshore Basketball league here. The Union Beach Board of Education was gracious enough to supply the Gym for our league to get started. With our partnership with Union Beach Recreation, we were able to obtain the Gym 3 days during the week. The Union Beach Board of Ed allowed us to use the Gym on Saturdays for a fee. We were able to get volunteers in order to make our very first Committee, and they would be the Basketball Committee. These individuals would help run the Bayshore Basketball league. In December 2016, we held our very first "Skills Test", a suggestion made by the Basketball Committee. Now we are half way into the 2017 Bayshore Basketball season with very minimum problems. But as any new program starts, there will always be a few wrinkles. Luckily, the Bayshore Sports and Recreation executive board has stepped in to help the Basketball Committee in order to try to iron out any more wrinkles. We are slowly making adjustments to the divisions that have these wrinkles, in order to keep our Bayshore community happy with the services the Bayshore Basketball league provides.