THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504080088
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 131 lines
``PLAY BALL!''
Those words, every bit as much a sign of spring as the first daffodil, will sound in Suffolk and in towns and cities large and small across the land as 1995 play begins.
More than 2,000 young ballplayers will take to the fields in Suffolk.
Far from the major league wrangles of strikes and negotiations, baseball in its purest form draws kids to their neighborhood diamonds while cheering fans settle in on sun-warmed bleachers to munch popcorn, root for their team and catch up on neighborhood happenings.
For scores of Suffolk families, however, youth baseball involvement - whether with Little League or Pony Baseball - runs deeper. For them, the season signals the start of an alternate lifestyle.
Entire families slip into the ballpark mode: week-nights and Saturdays filled with practices and games, hot dog dinners from the concession stand, grass-stained baseball pants and mothers' reminders to ``take off your cleats before you come into the house.''
Teresa Birkhead estimates that she and her husband, John, volunteer about 25 hours a week at the Suffolk Youth Athletic Association's Diamond Springs Park on Kings Fork Road.
It all started when their son Drew, now 8, was 5 and wanted to play T-ball. The league needed coaches, so John Birkhead volunteered.
Then, when the league needed a grounds director, Birkhead volunteered for that, too. ``Then, when they needed a concession director, he volunteered me for that!'' Teresa Birkhead said with a laugh.
Now John coaches two teams and supervises the grounds, Teresa manages the concession stand and serves on the board of directors, and Drew and sister Kelsey, 5, play ball.
It's all part of a family tradition. ``My husband and his family have been in sports all his life,'' Teresa Birkhead said. ``It is the family that puts the fun in ball.''
Over in northeast Suffolk, several families are moving into their third generation of Bennetts Creek Little League.
Spencer Hailey Rowe, a 5-year-old, left-handed rookie on the T-ball Angels, wants to be a shortstop, just like her dad, Gary Rowe. She is sure to get some good coaching - not only from her father, who played in the Bennetts Creek Little League when he was growing up, but also from her mother, Rhonda Rountree Rowe, who played softball in the same league.
Then there is her grandfather, Ronnie Rountree, who started coaching in Bennetts Creek 19 years ago and is still a staunch supporters. ``Back then, I was coaching two teams and my wife, Diane, was running the concession stand,'' he said.
``When the league first started, there was nothing out here but a bunch of grass, no fences, no dugouts, and it is unreal what they have done out here,'' he added as he glanced around the sprawling ball complex behind Driver Elementary School. Four fields, with a fifth under construction, fan out from a two-story concession stand and office building.
William K. ``Ken'' Parsons Jr., 32, a Little League father, coach and former player, shares Rountree's memories. His father, Kenny Parsons, was one of the league's founders. ``The Bennetts Creek kids used to have to go into Churchland to play,'' Parsons said. ``So they started a league of their own.''
That was 28 years ago, and the league is still growing. ``In 1994, we saw a 33 percent increase in league enrollment,'' said Joe Barco, league president. For the 1995 season, Bennetts Creek Little League will field 29 baseball teams and 16 softball teams with about 570 boys and girls, ages 5 to 18, on the roster. Parsons, who has coached girls' softball for nine years, will coach his 5-year-old son Kenny's T-ball team, the Marlins, this year as well as the high school-age girls' softball team. ``Once you get involved, you're hooked,'' Parsons said, adding that he often looks across at an opposing coach and recognizes a former teammate or competitor from his own Little League days.
The Suffolk Youth Athletic Association, incorporated in 1981, is chartered with the national Pony Baseball Association. This year, 450 boys and girls from 5 to 18 will play softball and baseball on 38 different teams with SYAA.
Dewey Privott, SYAA baseball commissioner, estimates that 140 adults will volunteer as board members, coaches, team moms, groundsmen and concession workers.
SYAA's Diamond Springs complex has seven fields, with two more under construction. In Bennetts Creek, youngsters play baseball under the Little League franchise until they turn 13. Then the Bennetts Creek Baseball Association, part of the Pony organization, offers teams for 13- to 16-year-olds. Just four years old, the BCBA has 60 boys on four teams that use the diamonds behind John Yeates Middle School as home field.
The oldest youth baseball organizations in Suffolk are the community leagues that began as independent Little Leagues in the mid-1960's and in 1974 joined together in the Peanut Pony Baseball Association. Chuckatuck, Carrsville, Cypress, Kings Fork, Whaleyville and Holland each maintain their own fields and budgets.
Together, the six leagues include about 1,000 players, said Peanut Pony president Clarence Babb.
Babb, who is also president of the Cypress baseball organization, played on one of its first Little League teams 32 years ago when he was coached by his uncle. ``I played until I was 16 and then I started coaching,'' Babb said. He coached his son, who is still playing in the Cypress league.
Why is baseball a family affair that keeps adults so involved?
``We are out here spending valuable time with our kids and other kids,'' Rountree said.
``We are not out here for the great players, who are few and far between and who will make it anyway. We are out here for the little guy chasing butterflies in the outfield.''
But if you ask any coach, you will find that there is a reward.
``It does something for me to see 20-year-olds I worked with as 4- or 5-year-olds and what they have done with their lives,'' Rountree said. ``You feel like one of the family.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
ON THE COVER
Ken Parsons Jr. coaches his son Kenny III on the details of pitching
at Bennetts Creek Little League fields. Staff photographer John H.
Sheally II took the picture.[color cover photo]
Kenny Parsons III swings for a hit on the Marlins T-ball team. Kenny
is a third generation Little Leaguer. His dad is his coach and his
grandfather was one of the founders of the Bennetts Creek league.
Above, 5-year-old Spencer Hailey Rowe, a T-ball Angel, gets some
pointers on handling the bat from her grandfather, former coach
Ronnie Rountree, who screams with joy, below, as she hits the ball
at the Bennetts Creek Little League fields in Driver. Her mom and
dad, Rhonda and Gary Rowe, also played in the same league.
Staff photo by MICHAEL KESTNER
Baseball is a Birkhead family tradition: Kelsey, 5, left, Shetland
T-ball; Drew, 8, Pinto baseball; dad, John, coach and SYAA grounds
maintenance, and mom, Theresa, concessions director.
by CNB