Wilshire-Riverside Little League

About WRLL Wilshire Riverside Little League PO Box 12494 Portland, OR 97212 [email protected] Mission Statement Wilshire Riverside Little League offers baseball to NE Portland kids so they can have fun, develop as players and teammates, learn life lessons, and be part of an inclusive community. We are a community focused organization One of the great things about Little League baseball is that it is community focused. The goal is to get as many kids playing baseball as possible. We get all the kids who want to play baseball in our community together. We draft them into even teams (Majors/Minors). Then they play each other right here in our community, on our fields, with our families doing the coaching and umping. In many other sports leagues, kids are tiered into select teams to go and play select teams from other areas. This has benefits of raising the level of competition and development but it sometimes comes at the expense of inclusion and community. Little League tries to have the best of both worlds by having an inclusive regular season followed by a select tournament season. The regular season is where all the kids can get together and play with and against all the other kids in their neighborhood. There is a level of competition that is balanced by providing opportunities for all players to develop. This is then followed by the tournament season where select teams of the best and most involved players can go on to play against select teams from other leagues. Coaches and Umpires are volunteers All of our coaches and the vast majority of our umpires are volunteers. They are coaches, parents, grandparents, family, and friends. We are always looking for more help and are happy to mentor novices. It is a great community to be a part of and a whole lot of fun. Let us know if you'd like to help us in any way. We redraft every year for Minors and Majors In order to make the teams in the regular season fair and well-balanced, WRLL utilizes a draft. This process is in large part directed by Little League regulations. All the players who want to play at a particular level go to a player evaluation session. This allows the coaches to familiarize themselves with the abilities of the players. The coaches then meet confidentially to take turns selecting players for their teams. We repeat the process every spring for minors and majors teams. As a result, kids get to play with different kids and different coaches each year. There are no "super teams" and you don't have to know someone to get on a team. We cannot honor friend or coach requests because they are not compatible with this process. The draft order is kept strictly confidential because we would never want anyone to know which order the kids were picked in. We only want them to know that they were picked and are wanted on their team. In the fall the process is more relaxed. There are no tryouts and no formal draft. We try to honor friend requests for this less competitive, developmental season.