Another Successful Spring and Summer Season for the Greenwich Village Little League
By Anthony Paradiso
GREENWICH VILLAGE LITTLE LEAGUE’S 12U All-Stars team pose for a photograph after winning their district championship for the second year in a row. Photo courtesy of ToniAnn Bonade, President of Greenwich Village Little League.
Greenwich Village Little League’s 12U travel team just lost two out of three games to South Shore in their Sectional bracket finals. The Manhattanites competed hard against “the team to beat” as league president ToniAnn Bonade described them, but they just came up a bit short. The 12U team was made up of All-Stars taken from GVLL’s baseball divisions in the Spring season who then were given the opportunity to compete in the summer in Districts and Sectionals.
To get there, Greenwich Village’s 12U team won District 23 for the second year in a row. Last year was the first time that a Greenwich Village 12U team had won Districts in the league’s 40-year history. In addition, this year the GVLL 10U All-Stars team won Districts for the third year in a row.
The bonds that have formed on this 12U team date back to 2022. That year, GVLL’s 10U team won Districts for the first time in over a decade and eight of the same kids who were on that team were on this summer’s 12U team. Bonade was there to witness it all and described some of the moves she made as a general manager of sorts that helped bring that team together.
“2022 was the year we started prioritizing participation in the Little League World Series post- Covid. We held tryouts after the Spring season and we convinced kids to stick around through mid-July for the Tournament…given a lot of kids either leave the city for the summer or go away to camp. Then we found two coaches who really knew this specific crop of kids, who really cared about the community, and who were obsessed with Little League Baseball and on the more competitive side and went for it. We had a great deal of success that first year and 2022 was our first District win in over a decade with the 10U team.”
It’s rare to keep a winning team together in today’s world, but the GVLL made it happen because its leadership worked hard to foster a sense of community among the over 800 families who took part. “Greenwich Village Little League is a true community. We live in a big city and in New York especially, it’s rare to have a tight-knit group of families that really know each other, really like each other, really want to spend time with each other and are happy to dedicate their time and attention towards this Little League,” said Bonade.
The GVLL 12U All-Stars team met its greatest challenge in playing against South Shore in the Section 3 South championship series and it didn’t start off well. Greenwich Village lost the first game of that series 16-0. It would have been easy for them to hang their heads after such a devastating loss but they responded in game two.
“The coaching staff (Dan Zaret, Matt Diaz and Donny Furst) are phenomenal and this was their third year in a row winning at the District level. They put a ton of strategy toward getting the wins at the Sectional level this year especially against South Shore,” said Bonade. “The strategy against South Shore was to load the defense and limit their ability to score. Just putting players in the field with good gloves and attempting to keep the score really low. We were up 1-0 for a few innings, and then South Shore tied it. Then GVLL went ahead and held them and won with a final score of 2-1. It was crazy, everybody was thrilled. We never thought we’d get that far and beat South Shore. The phrase everybody kept repeating as we went into the second Championship game was ‘it’s only up from here, you’re playing with house money.’ The entire run was just unbelievable.”
Greenwich Village would go on to lose the series, but they accomplished something special by going toe-to-toe with a team that is a favorite year-after-year. After three and a half months of baseball, everybody on the 12U All-Stars team said, “that was the best thing ever and I can’t wait until next year.”
Overall, the 2024 spring and summer seasons were a resounding success for GVLL and it all starts with Bonade and the parents reaching out to families in the winter. Most families pay the $100-$150 fee to join either a tee-ball, minors or majors division but for the families who could not afford it, GVLL gave out $14,000 in scholarships. As a result, for the first time since before the pandemic, GVLL registration was completely full, thanks to a group of parents who pushed the league at the school levels.
It truly takes a village to raise a Little League and Bonade gave credit to the board of directors who helped make sure all 800 families were happy with the league. “My board is made up of a really dedicated group of people. I’d say half have kids that are long done with Little League but they stay involved because they care about the community, they love Little League, and they see what an impact it has on the kids. When you play Little League, you learn the best life lessons, you learn about everything, hard work, dedication, sportsmanship, commitment, competition, and managing failure.”
Lastly, Bonade touched on what has made the league such a success this year and what her role as league president will be going forward. “We offer clinics throughout the season and partner with P3 which runs out of Pier 40. We offer batting practice, we do pitching clinics, catching clinics, anything to help these kids improve over the season. None of the things we do as a Little League are groundbreaking. But I just think really pushing registration to get as many kids into the league as possible, and then putting the right people in place at every level, fostering community and making everything accessible and inclusive to as many kids and families as possible… those are really the main priorities that I’m focused on in running a successful league.”
ANTHONY PARADISO is a contributing writer and editor. Anthony has written for sports news sites In The Zone Sports Lifestyle & Culture, Bad Dawg Sports and Jersey Sporting News.
