On Wednesday and Friday evenings in the summer, young Haines athletes take to the baseball field to play Little League.
This year, Haines is seeing a surge in interest in the sport.
“We had a phenomenal year,” said Paul Carrington, who took over as president of the Haines Little League board earlier this year.
Carrington said he had no idea what kind of interest he would get, but ended up with more than 50 players at one point in the season.
“I was definitely surprised. I had no idea what we were going to get. If we were going to get one or two teams, if we were going to have to tell kids no,” said Carrington.
The hardest part of the job, he said, was finding enough coaches to support all of the kids who wanted to play.
“Getting people to volunteer has probably been the biggest challenge,” he said.
But, community members came through and made the season possible.
“It took definitely making a lot of phone calls and trying a lot of leads,” said Carrington, but he said they were eventually able to find enough adults to put together four teams.
“It’s been really great and based on what we’ve got this year we’re definitely going to have to expand next year,” said Carrington.
The Little League season is ongoing for a few more weeks, with games at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays.