Lawrence’s Renegades qualified for the 18-and-under Triple Crown World Series by winning a baseball tournament last weekend in Belton, Mo.

Don’t expect the local American Legion post to throw a victory parade.

Eleven members of Lawrence High’s junior varsity program spurned the Lawrence Amateur Baseball Assn. this summer to play for the Renegades, a traveling team. The defections left the Lawrence Mavericks the LABA’s 16-and-under American Legion team with a small, young talent pool.

“I don’t want any hard feelings, but I know there are some,” said Mel Lisher, one of the parents who helped organize the Renegades. “I can’t help that.”

History lesson

American Legion ball has been played in Lawrence since 1949, and Lawrence is one of just two Kansas towns with four American Legion teams. In the early 1990s the Legion merged its two teams with the Breakfast Optimist’s two teams, forming the LABA.

The 18-and-under squads are the A-team Raiders and the B-team Outlaws. Their rosters are a mix of LHS, Free State and area high school players.

In the winter of 2000, LABA struck a deal with Lawrence High coach David Petry and Free State coach Mike Hill to let Petry coach Lawrence’s 16-and-under players on the Mavericks, while Hill would coach Free State’s 16-and-under players with the Bandits.

Both Hill and Petry had been looking for a way to coach their high schools’ youngest players during the summer, and this agreement gave them the opportunity without taking players away from LABA.

However, in January, Petry told the LABA board he wouldn’t be able to coach the Mavericks this summer. He and wife Kelly have a 9-month-old child, and Kelly is battling cancer.

“It would be nice to have your high school team stay intact and stay where a high school coach could evaluate them,” Petry said. “That wasn’t realistic this summer.”

Coaching maneuvers

LABA approached Steve Seratte, who had coached previously in LABA, about filling in for Petry. Serrate turned down the job because he was already committed to coaching his son’s youth team, but he did sign on as Mavericks assistant.

McLouth High School coach Jason Fahring, who was an Outlaws assistant in 2000, was named head coach in February.

In March, parents of players who would later become Renegades volunteered in a fund-raiser for the Mavericks. There were some rumblings, however, from parents who wanted former LHS coach Lynn Harrod to run the team rather than the 27-year-old Fahring.

“Lynn never came to the board and said he wanted to coach,” LABA president Ron Goodwin said. “Some parents wanted me to fire Jason and hire Lynn. I can’t do that.”

LABA secretary Lee Ice pointed out that LABA advertises its coaching positions during the winter, and Harrod who was an assistant to Petry last summer never applied.

“He led me to believe he wasn’t interested in doing it again,” Petry said of Harrod. “Maybe I misunderstood his intentions. Maybe he changed his mind. If somebody tells me they’re not interested, I’m not going to beg them.”

But LHS parents did.

“I’ve known Lynn for a long time,” Ice said. “He’s played Legion. He’s coached Legion. I asked Lynn, ‘Why are you doing this?’ He said, ‘They asked me.’ I said, ‘Well, say no.’ If he wanted to be part of our program he should have asked, but he wanted to be asked and that’s exactly what happened.”

Starting in April, LHS parents made repeated requests for Harrod to coach a traveling team. Their persistence paid off.

“Parents asked me to coach,” said Harrod, who led LHS to seven state tournament berths between 1986 and 1996. “I told parents a couple of times no because I thought it was too late.”

It was too late for the Renegades to join a summer league, but not too late to put together a tournament schedule.

When the LABA conducted tryouts, most of Lawrence High’s junior varsity players didn’t show. The Renegades invited all of the Lions’ JV players to join their new team, and all but three accepted.

“When this has happened in the past, we knew it months in advance,” Ice said. “This year we found out 10 days before the season.”

Why they left

“The kids wanted to stay together,” said Lisher, whose son, Carl, is a 16-year-old catcher. “There were so many kids trying out, they didn’t think they would get playing time if they moved up to 18-and-under or even if they stayed at 16-and-under.”

Ice said it was difficult for LABA to compete with select teams because, while Legion players must try out and compete for playing time, select teams recruit players with specific positions in mind and can guarantee playing time.

“That’s what kids want to hear,” Ice said. “That’s what parents want to hear. We don’t make any guarantees, and that scares some people off. It used to be the American Legion was a program everyone wanted to play for. Now it’s ‘what can we offer’ instead of ‘what can they bring to the program.’ There’s a lot of other options. It’s not the only game in town.”

Lisher said the Renegades would play a tougher, longer schedule than the Mavericks a claim Ice disputed.

The Renegades will play a minimum of 40 games and could play in as many as 60 if they continue to fare well in tournaments. The Mavericks will play a 37-game schedule, which also could be extended by tournament success.

One main difference is that the Renegades will be competing against older foes.

“These kids are going to see some competition because they’re playing 18-and-under teams, and they’re mostly 16-year-old kids,” Lisher said.

“Whenever Lawrence kids want to do this there’s a thorn up somebody’s nose. This is what the kids wanted. If you’re a parent, you try to make that happen. It wasn’t parents, and it wasn’t Lynn. It was the kids. They wanted to stay together. It wasn’t anything against the Legion. I played Legion ball.”

Hurt feelings

Lisher was a pitcher in the American Legion program from 1971 to 1975. That fact doesn’t make the defections any easier for LABA members such as Ice, who played four years in Legion and coached another 10.

“The most frustrating thing is that a lot of the parents that did this used to be part of American Legion baseball,” said Ice, whose father was involved with the organization for 25 years. “They are people I used to play with. Their parents were American Legion coaches. They’re the same people who used to question the motives of people who did things like this.”

Harrod, meanwhile, is dumbfounded that he’s viewed as a villain by the LABA.

“I didn’t start this,” he said. “It’s amazing that people are chastising me when I’m donating my time and even my equipment to help kids.”

Harrod has his own list of complaints. He’s irked that his team has been unable to use city fields for practices. His team, which also includes players from Eudora and Baldwin, has practiced at Baker University in Baldwin.

Three of four LABA teams use Free State’s field, while the Mavericks and the Holcom League use Ice Field.

“The city recognizes our program as the program that provides that opportunity to that group of kids,” said Ice, the city’s youth sports director. “If a select team goes off and does something on their own, the city can’t provide for everyone.

“We are so fragmented. Everybody wants what they want. There’s not enough of us who want the same thing, so we’re never going to get it. We don’t need more fields. We need to be on the same page.”

Lawrence hasn’t produced a Legion state champion since 1964. Ice said select teams deserved a large part of the blame for that shortcoming.

“If we had all the horses that are out there going other places, we could do it,” he said.

Young Mavericks

Fahring’s team lost its season opener on Wednesday night, and the young squad is likely to lose a few more.

Fahring has a roster of 15 players. In addition to 11 LHS freshmen and sophomores, the Mavs have one player from Free State, two from Seabury Academy and one home-school student.

Fahring said he originally planned to keep 17 players.

“We’ll get by with 15,” he said. “We’ve got quite a few 15-year-olds, but I think we’ll be decent. At McLouth, I’m used to small numbers. We finished the year with 11 healthy players, so 15 seems like a blessing.”

The future

What will happen next summer is uncertain. Petry doesn’t know if he’ll be able to return to the Mavericks bench. For the record, he didn’t encourage or discourage his players from leaving LABA and has stayed clear of the fray.

As for the players, Ice and Goodwin said that when athletes had left the program in the past they had been allowed to return. Lisher, however, said he anticipated the Renegades staying together as a select team.

The American Legion and LABA have weathered defections before, and Goodwin said this would be no different.

“Two years down the road when these people are done and gone, we’ll still be here,” Goodwin said.

The latest defections, however, have caused LABA to look at how it does business. Ice and Goodwin said the organization might start signing players up earlier in the fall or stop open tryouts and begin recruiting players.

Another option, Goodwin said, would be for LABA to cut the number of teams it supports. LABA has a budget of $24,000 for its four teams. The organization pays for its teams’ road trips, including hotels and meal money.

“Those other teams don’t do that,” Goodwin said. “I don’t understand what we’re doing wrong. You work hard. I don’t have a kid involved in this. I’m doing this because I played Legion ball and somebody was there. My son played Legion ball and somebody was there. I’m trying to give back.”