The team was supposed to arrive in Cooperstown for its week on Saturday, Aug. The coaches met with the families last week, and collectively decided to opt out as well. The Seacoast Storm, a team comprised each year from the Seacoast Cal Ripken League in Hampton, has been going to Cooperstown Dreams Park for years. “I think (Cooperstown Dreams Park) knew what the decision of all the parents was going to be,” Wells said. Wells believes Cooperstown Dreams Park put the vaccination mandate in place, to take it out of its own hands, and ultimately in the hands of the families throughout the country. There is an aura about the town of Cooperstown.” “This is a trip I remember when I was 12 years old. They get to meet kids from all the over country, and they get to play on some of the nicest fields that they will ever get to play on. “People don’t understand what this trip (to Dreams Park) means to a 12-year-old baseball player,” Wells said. “We feel that the restrictions made by Cooperstown really backed us into a corner and gave us zero choice. We and nobody else, should tell you what decisions need to be made for your children. We are still speechless but trying to move on and find new tournaments.”īoth Watson with her Pappi’s Pride team and Seacoast United are hoping to play in a tournament at Cooperstown All-Star Village in Oneonta, N.Y., a 24-mile drive from downtown Cooperstown. “We have decided to opt out of Cooperstown this season,” Seacoast United coach Eric Wells wrote in an email sent to families. Seacoast United typically sends three teams to Cooperstown Dreams Park each summer the club notified its families on Saturday it was opting out. We put it in the families’ hands and 99 percent of our team didn’t want to go.” “We didn’t want to make that call for them. “We wanted to make sure they had all the information we had from Cooperstown so they could make a decision as families, what they wanted to do and what they felt was right for them,” Watson said. Watson met with the families of this year’s Southern Maine Pappi’s Pride last Sunday to go over the different options and how they wanted to proceed. When a Cooperstown Dreams Park official was asked how this mandate could be in place when there isn’t even a vaccine available for anyone under 16 years old, they responded “in order to be able to play this summer, all 12-year-olds must be vaccinated," while any player who is 11 years old simply had to supply a negative COVID test. Also, there is no actual vaccine right now for a 12-year-old.” “Parents didn’t feel comfortable vaccinating their child, which is understandable. “Cooperstown mandating that all the players who were 12 years old had to be vaccinated by the time they got there was the main reason we opted out,” Watson said. Watson’s team, called the Southern Maine Pappi’s Pride, is in honor of Troy Pappas, a 2012 Marshwood High School graduate who died tragically a little less than four months after graduating. For a lot of the kids, this is the only opportunity they'll have to play at Dreams Park it truly is heartbreaking.” “My parents and I who run the team have been going to Cooperstown each year since 2002 bringing a team we understand the impact this has on the kids and the experience they get to have when they go to Cooperstown.
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