Shining the weekly light on the West Plains Little League

This is probably a long time coming, 11 years long time is likely, but the Cheney Free Press has decided to add a new feature to our sports coverage line up.

Beginning this week, the intrepid Free Press reporting staff will be bringing you a West Plains Little League game of the week. The idea is to pick one game from among the Majors and AAA divisions of WPLL’s baseball and softball leagues and cover it, providing a write up as best we can along with pictures.

We hope to get as many of the teams in our pages as possible during the remainder of the season, which also includes games with Spokane South Little League in baseball, and the Bi-County and Lake Spokane/Deer Park little leagues in softball. We may not be able to get every team, but we’ll do our best.

This is the 11th year for West Plains Little League. The league sprang out of a meeting in December 2003 at Medical Lake’s City Hall council chambers between groups of individuals from Cheney and Medical Lake and other areas of the West Plains.

The first year had a turnout of over 250 kids, when organizers felt they would be lucky to get half that. It has since grown to years when 500 – 550 kids take part in divisions ranging from age 5 – 12, baseball and softball. This year, numbers are at 400, down some but that’s to be expected given the broad sports offerings now available in southwest Spokane County along with population fluctuations.

Since its inception the league has also grown in facilities, working with the city of Cheney to turn two former softball fields at Salnave Park into regulation Little League International venues. Those efforts, financial and physical, have paid off not only in creating some nice fields for local athletes to play on, but also attracting the attention of Little League district and state officials.

The Salnave fields have held not only District 13 All-Star tournaments, but state All-Star tournaments too. This year, West Plains Little League will host the 9-10 year old state tournament, dates in July to be coming some time soon.

And besides hosting, West Plains Little League has had its share of All-Star champions as well. Since 2005, the WPLL Junior League team, ages 13-14, has emerged as District 13 champs every year but one, 2011. In 2010, WPLL had five district champions: Junior, Majors and 9-10 baseball along with Majors and 9-10 softball.

Over the years, the Cheney Free Press has provided some coverage to West Plains Little League, attending opening day festivities for photos and running league standings and results as much as possible in our sports page stats box. With all of its success, we felt it was really past time to turn more of the spotlight on our area’s up and coming players, our future Blackhawks and Cardinals stars.

Our coverage may not be as exact as it is with high school sports, but we’ll do our best. And as always, we rely on your help as readers, coaches and fans.

You know how to contact us. See you around the Little League diamonds.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.