by Adam Gault
Trivia enthusiasts and baseball teams, from as far away as Sarnia and Tilbury, filled Kingsville’s Lakeside Park Pavilion on Saturday night for an evening of dinner, trivia, and prizes; all in support of Kingsville Minor Baseball, and its commitment to providing a top-notch baseball program in Essex County.
Kingsville Minor Baseball has hosted an annual trivia night for the past ten years. It has evolved from just a few diehard supporters in the early years, to an event that now takes over the Lakeside Pavilion where contestants vie for numerous prizes, such as flat screen TVs.
“We make a few thousand dollars to go towards equipment,” Kingsville Minor Baseball President, Steve Hatt, explained of the annual event’s proceeds. “It’s fun to get the kids and parents out, and we use some of our ballplayers to help out.”
The evening’s trivia went well beyond the world of baseball history, proving challenging for even the most seasoned of trivia connoisseurs. Many different questions, from several different subjects, were asked, including trivia about the Osmonds, the sleeping habits of dolphins, and the name Elvis gave to his private jet (Lisa Marie).
“We do everything, I’ve got questions from the 1930s all the way to today; geography, history, sports, TV, movies, everything,” Hatt said. “This way, everybody knows something.”
Kingsville Minor Baseball offers programs from recreational T-ball at five years old, all the way to a travel system, up to high school seniors. The variety provides an opportunity for young players of all skills and ages to play.
“We’ve been growing,” Hatt said of the rise in popularity of the Kingsville Baseball of which he’s been involved since 2001. “In the beginning, we used to be around 300 registered, now we top 400, 440. Our teams have grown, and we’ve developed a girl’s program that started out with five teams in the county, and now it’s 35 teams.”
Beyond athletics and exercise, youth baseball also provides kids with a great way for good old-fashioned socialization in an ever-dependent technological world, allowing for the development of friendships that can last a lifetime.
“[There are] 12 on a team, and they have to work together to play. We keep players together sometimes, and if we don’t, you get on a different team and you get to meet a whole bunch of different people”
Although registration for Kingsville Minor Baseball begins in the fall, limited space is still available for kids looking to join a team this coming season.
For more information, visit kingsvilleminorbaseball.com.