The Carl E. Stotz Little League® Community of the Year Award recognizes leagues that go above and beyond to ingrain itself as a core pillar of its community while offering outstanding opportunities to the players and volunteers in the league. Former recipients Arlington Southwest (Texas) Little League and Snug Harbor Little League (Staten Island, N.Y.) have continued to grow and serve their communities while still providing a fun and safe baseball and softball experience.
Becoming the first league from the Southwest Region to win the award in 2019, Arlington Southwest LL is a key fixture of its community. With the motto “because it’s about so much more than baseball” displayed on its website, the league has found success in bringing the community together through affordable concessions and free shuttle rides from parking lots to the bleachers.
As the 2023 award recipient, Snug Harbor LL earned the recognition after completing a multi-year project on a new lighting system thanks to Musco Lighting and the MLB-MLBPA Youth Development Fund (YDF). Installing the lights was no overnight project, but rather the culmination of a multi-year vision from Snug Harbor Little League’s former League President, Anthony Varvaro, who was tragically killed in a vehicle accident on September 11, 2022. A former MLB pitcher who also served as a Port Authority Police Officer when not volunteering for Little League, Varvaro was an iconic figure throughout his Staten Island community and was committed to creating the best possible Little League experience for all the players, volunteers, and families throughout his community. Current League President and Vavaro’s brother-in-law, Dennis Thomson, took over the role after his passing, helping the community move forward while ensuring generations to come know of Varvaro’s legacy by renaming the facility to the “Anthony Varvaro Memorial Complex.”
To learn more about these two leagues, Little League sat down with both Arlington Southwest Little League’s President, Brett Smith, and Snug Harbor LL’s President, Dennis Thomson, for a Local League Spotlight, a series of content created to help other leagues learn from each other’s success stories. Below, you will find quotes from each of the two, along with how each of the leagues bring these ideas to life in their communities.
Become a Staple in Your Community
Arlington Southwest LL
“We have opportunities in both the spring and the fall season to partner with Mission Arlington and encourage volunteerism not only in the league, but outside with the park as well. We do our best to reach out to those less fortunate. This league is in a very affluent part of Arlington, but we are minutes away from the very least affluent areas, and we have families from both. We serve the entirety of the spectrum. We also encourage Key Club for junior high and high school students, along with student mentor programs with all age groups.”
Snug Harbor LL
“Within the community, we’ve gotten heavily involved with local schools and businesses. We’ll do Snug Harbor Night Out at different restaurants, which allows the businesses to get promoted by people going there and trying them out, and in return, they donate to the league a percentage of whatever sales they make that night. We also invite the schools we go to for league promotion to come do field days down at the park. It gets a bunch of kids to come see the complex, which then, in return, we hope some of them want to play.”
Strive To Make Your League Accessible for All
Arlington Southwest LL
“We’ve offered a $1 concession stand menu (with a stand that is always open) since this leadership team took over in 2009, because we know families need this affordable option so that they can afford to participate. We give the city 18% commission on all sales. We lose money but rely on our partners to make up the difference. Additionally, some grandparents would not be able to come out to the park and watch their grandkids play if it were not for a ride to their seats and back to their cars, so we’ve offered that shuttle service since we could afford the carts starting in 2014. We had to change the league’s culture first. Once we were able to do that, significant partners took notice of what we were doing and decided to help financially.”
- The league also provides full gear for umpires, so volunteers don’t have to pay for the equipment necessary to work the games.
Snug Harbor LL
“We have some of the better pitching coaches on Staten Island in our complex, and we offer all of our young players free lessons. So these girls, for letting them use the enclosure, they return the favor by making sure that all of our young girls have an opportunity to learn how to pitch without having to pay anything and see if it’s something they’re into. We have Moore Catholic High School and St. Joseph Hill Academy High School, which have two of the bigger girls’ high school programs on Staten Island, and their coaches are good friends of the league; they come down all the time and run free clinics for our girls to get them better. With how expensive everything is, it helps people out a lot that they don’t have to reach into their pocket for everything they’re doing here.”
- Snug Harbor LL also runs free baseball clinics throughout the year. The clinics are run by former MLB pitcher, South Shore Little League (Staten Island, N.Y.) graduate, and 1991 Little League Baseball® World Series participant, Jason Marquis, and other local high school coaches and players from around the area.
Keep Your Alumni Involved in the League
Snug Harbor LL
“We have an enclosure in our complex that has three lanes with pitching machines and pitching mounds. Any kid who plays within our league can call in and book the enclosure, free of charge. So, it’s open year-round, and we keep it open for our current kids and kids who graduated from our league that are now older so they can come back and play for free. If you were involved in the league as a 10-year-old and now you’re 17 and still playing at the next level, you can come down and use it for free, which then leads to some of the alumni working with the younger kids still in the program.”
Develop Your Softball Programs
Snug Harbor LL
“Our President of Softball, Anthony DiCaro, does a great job of getting the word out to all the young kids. A lot of these girls start at four, five, and six years old, and you have to make it fun for that age. You want them to learn, but you have to end each session with something fun, because that’s what they remember. If they see that it ended with something very fun, they want to come back and do it again. In April, we did an Easter egg hunt. In May, we get a bunch of jump houses, put them on the field, and do a girls’ day on the field with a pizza party after. Then in June, we have an end-of-the-year girls’ party on one of our fields. These events typically have a high attendance, and all of the girls get along so well. Events like this inspire them to want to be a part of it every year because they have become such good friends with each other through playing softball. We have kept within our league a lot of our better girls who continue playing through high school and college. They come back and stay involved with the girls and run clinics all the time. Once they’re engaged and into it, they’re going to want to hopefully play at every level, and they’re going to tell their friends how great it is.”
Advice for Other Leagues
Arlington Southwest LL
“We speak with one voice. Once the board makes a decision, we all stay in our lanes and support that decision. There is simply no controversy here. There’s transparency within the league as well. Everyone knows how they will be treated with respect, and they want what this league has to give.
Snug Harbor LL
“The best advice I got was from South Shore Little League President, Ben Isabel. He said, it’s a year-round operation. If you take it as we’re only going to run during the months that we play, you’re never going to grow. You have to continue that momentum year-round. So right when your season ends, you’ve got to start preparing for the next season. And that means fixing your fields, fundraising, getting out to all these events that the kids go to, and promoting your league and letting people know about it. Because there are so many people in your area who you think know about your league, but they have no idea. It’s about getting flyers out there, getting into schools, and trying to get the schools to let you do a presentation about your league. Nowadays, with social media, there are so many different social media groups within your community posting about your league, all the stuff you do down there, and making a lot of the events fun for the kids.”
To learn more about the Little League® program and find a league in your community, visit PlayLittleLeague.org.