I was asked to provide an overview of our year to our Board of Directors who will be meeting for the first time since our elections. As I finish the review it really makes me see the impact that we have as a youth organization and how we affect our community. I’d like to share some statistics with you and thank you for your continued (or newly gained) support for the association.
In the year 2020:
Over 2000 players registered and played for one of our recreational level Metro leagues. This is after the spring season had to be moved to the summer, the summer season was cancelled, and many parents chose to keep their kids home. Initially the spring season saw rough 1200 participants, after we closed and then reopened 3 months later, we still had over 900 players participate. This fall will see in excess of 1100 players competing in our league. 71 teams competed in the Spring, uh, Summer season, and over 90 will play this fall. The Summer season would normally add an additional 400+ registrants, meaning nearly 2700 participants would have been with us in a normal year.
120 travel teams will play in one of the two Fall double header leagues we are hosting on the weekends. Having these teams compete at SKSA contributes significantly to our concession stand revenue and helps defray the cost of maintaining our 3 facilities. The travel teams in league represent another 1300+ players
Over 800 tournament registrations played at Rothwood and Klein Park. This represents over 8,000 players.
Each team that plays brings approximately 19 people to the park between siblings, parents, grandparents, friends, etc.
Over 3,000 games will be played at our 2 baseball facilities.
Over 50,000 spectators will watch a game at either Rothwood or Klein Park
Spring Klein employees more than 30 employees. 6 Full time employees and 3 part time manage our facilities, operate the administrative side of the organization, train and schedule umpires, schedule games, practices, repair the fields, buildings and equipment. We employ over 20 employees in the concession stands, mostly part time and many are siblings of players, or former players.
Over 100 individuals umpired a baseball game for us this year.
3 SKSA umpires attended 1 of the 2 Professional Umpire schools in Florida. All three were hired by Professional Baseball, 2 in the Minor Leagues and 1 in the Independent leagues. That brings to 8 the number of our umpires that have chosen to pursue umpiring professionally. SKSA has one of the few established programs to help umpires achieve their dreams. Current and former professional umpires head up our training staff.
18 of our Umpire staff were scheduled to work College games.
During the Spring / Summer session our concession stand served
3,700 hot dogs
2,500 pretzels
1,400 hamburgers
800 chicken strip meals
2,000 nachos
2,000 servings of French fries
300 pizzas
500 corn dogs
800 breakfast meals
More than 30 businesses have donated money as corporate sponsors for capital improvements to the park
More than 150 businesses will sponsor a team to help defray the costs of uniforms and games
Over 4,000 ft of steel was turned into new bleachers, designed, built and installed by our staff at roughly 1/3 the cost of purchasing new
6 – the number of press boxes built this year. That means that 10 of our 14 fields now have a press box with design work being completed on the other 4.
Rothwood Baseball complex continues to be one of the largest private facilities in Texas. SKSA is one of only a few recreational programs that own their facility and does not rely on city or county funds to operate. This is only possible because of the hard work of the dozens of volunteers that work both behind the scenes and in public as well as the very dedicated staff that I have been blessed to work with. Of our 6 full time employees, 3 have been here more than 18 years, at 15 years, I have only half as much time in as our longest tenured employee.
Everyone at SKSA is committed to giving your child and yourself, the best possible experience when they play here. I would like to personally, and on behalf of our board members and employees, thank each of you for choosing to play at Spring Klein and continuing to support the vision that we have.