Elyria South Baseball Club hosts annual banquet – Morning Journal

Aric Bowens, founder of the Elyria South Baseball Club, poses with the league’s trophies at the fourth annual end-of-season banquet on July 13. (Martin McConnell – The Morning Journal)

Aric Bowens has emerged as one of the premier young athletes in all of Lorain County, and the league’s largest player base was celebrated at this year’s Elyria South Baseball Club’s end-of-season banquet at South Park, 1864 Middle Ave. in Elyria.

In just four years, the baseball club has grown to 15 teams and nearly 200 players, according to Bowens. He said this year may have been the club’s most successful season yet.

“This will be our fourth annual banquet… We finished the season with 15 teams and over 175 kids total,” Bowens said. “We started with T-ball, went up to 14U, and in fact our 14U will be competing in our Hot Stove tournament later today.”

Bowens is proud of the growth the club has experienced in less than five years and is excited to see the club continue to develop. With the green space available at the park, he hopes to add another field to increase the league’s capacity by 2025.

“We’ve gained some teams and some fans,” Bowens said. “I know the city of Elyria (and the club) are working on getting another field in the back. We expect to have another T-ball field next season. We’ve had to use (other parks), so we’ve actually outgrown our capacity.”

The club was a passion project for Bowens, he said, but it has evolved into so much more. He called the Elyria South Baseball Club’s success a comprehensive community effort in partnership with the city of Elyria and several area businesses.

“It’s a dream come true,” Bowens said. “We’ve literally grown to the point where we hired our coach, Al Stacey, he’s our new president. He’s going to help organize the instructional part… (We have) a lot of different parts and new committees, growing parts of the whole tree.”

In addition to Stacey’s skills as a trainer, Bowens and his team have hired several new secretaries to keep the organization running, he said.

The club’s flagship event, the Hot Stove Tournament, ran throughout the banquet for the league’s U14 teams. Not only does the tournament keep the competition fresh with new teams, but it also provides local athletes with truly competitive baseball throughout the season.

“Instead of just playing Little League, where you play the same teams every day, we travel all over Lorain County,” Bowens said. “We make sure the kids have a really good experience playing at least 20 games.”

Looking to the future, Bowens is working with Bobby Taylor, director of planning and community service for the Lorain County Community Action Agency, to grow the league even further.

The hope, says Bowens, is that the old slogan from “Field of Dreams” will come true: If you build it, they will come.

“We want to grow and have more fields and more teams. We would love to host tournaments here,” Bowens said. “Bobby Taylor was involved in building this field … We know if we build more, more kids will come.”

For more information about the Elyria South Baseball Club, visit the group’s Facebook page.