Every Monday and Wednesday throughout this summer Albert Lea parks have been transformed into a center of youth athletics as children play baseball.

Albert Lea Community Baseball decided this season to move the coach-pitch and T-ball leagues into community parks and the move has been met with a favorable response for the most part.

Prior to this season the leagues played at J.M. Snyder Fields, which put further strain on the fields because most youth baseball teams practice there already.

Kelly Bordewick and Stan Thompson, along with others involved with Albert Lea Community Baseball decided to try to put the kids back in neighborhood parks like Edgewater, Morin, Hawthorne and Valley to create more visibility of the sport and get more children interested in baseball.

It’s been a long time since some of the parks have seen consistent use like they have this summer, and people have enjoyed coming out to watch the kids play as crowds swarm down the third base and first base line.

There are six teams in each the coach-pitch and T-ball leagues and around 180 total kids participating this summer.

“It’s been awesome,” Thompson said. “Everyone seems to be having a great time.”

The players were matched up as close as possible to their neighborhood park and parents have enjoyed the convenience of not having travel too far, especially if the parents have children in each league.

Tracey Ball helps coach T-ball and coach-pitch at Valley Park, and she has enjoyed the move back to the neighborhood parks.

“I love that it’s tied into the local parks,” Ball said. “Everyone is back to their neighborhoods.”

Ball said interest in the games has risen this season as well. On many nights it can be tough to find a place to park, she said.

“There’s just a lot more people than there used to be,” Ball said. “I don’t know if it’s because there’s only one game … you just feel at home.”

The Albert Lea Parks and Recreation Department ran the two leagues prior to this season and Thompson and Bordewick have worked to make the program include more instruction by giving coaches ideas for practices and focusing on building skills early on.

Bordewick and Thompson, who helped build the Albert Lea Knights youth baseball program, held a coaches’ meeting at the start of the season to give coaches ideas of how to run practice with young kids so they will be able to learn and have fun at the same time.

“This is structured and they’re learning and there’s improvement,” Ball said.

Bordewick said the response has been good so far and he expects the programs to continue to grow.

“Our biggest thing in general was that we wanted to get the enthusiasm up,” he said. “I think you’re going to see our numbers keep growing.”

Each team was modeled after a major league club such as the Hawthorne T-ball team is called the D-Backs, like the Arizona Diamondbacks and those who play at Valley Park in coach-pitch league are called the Orioles.

“Stan and Kelly have done a tremendous job setting this up,” Ball said.