Oak Park and River Forest Pony Baseball
The Oak Park and River Forest Pony Baseball organization is a chapter of the national PONY (Protect Our Nations Youth) organization and is governed by a local Board of Directors that meets on a monthly basis to ensure the proper running of the league. All of the men and women involved with OPRF Pony Baseball are volunteers.
Some members of the board have been involved with Oak Park Pony Baseball for decades and one of our coaches has been involved for almost 30 years. The board has strong ties to the community including Oak Park River Forest High School and Fenwick High School.
The board of directors provides governance for the in-house 13-14 year-old teams, the travel/tournament/national teams and the 15-16 year-old intra-village teams.
Pony Level
The in-house Pony league is for boys aged thirteen to fourteen and is made up of two divisions: Cunningham and Knight. The season opens mid-April and ends mid-July. Concurrent with the in-house league play, several teams will be formed to participate in tournaments as well as to compete nationally (regional, zone, and ultimately, the Pony World Series).
The Cunningham division is made up of eight teams with twelve to thirteen players on a team. The teams play a season of roughly 20 games with a double-elimination playoff and an All-Star game. The managers of the teams in the Cunningham division are committed individuals who have given their time and efforts over many years (even decades) to providing the best knowledge of the sport to the boys in their charge. The Cunningham division is a very competitive division with a high level of play.
All of the registered boys are evaluated by the team managers and team coaches during a week-long tryout session in late March/early April. All eligible players are then chosen by the Cunningham managers at a professional style draft. Once a player is drafted by a Cunningham team, they are considered a member of that team, even for the following year if they are eligible to play in the Pony League again.
After all of the open slots on the teams have been filled, the remaining players are sorted by ability level into equal teams. The sorted teams are known as the Knight division. This division is made up of approximately eight teams given the number of players available. Every effort is made to see that the teams have been balanced based on player talent.
The Knight division managers, like their Cunningham counterparts are also volunteers. Typically they are parents that donate their time and efforts to the team to provide a learning opportunity for the boys in their charge. The major difference is that not all of the managers in the Knight division volunteer for more than two years at a time as they will likely move on after their son(s) age out of the Pony league. While the Knight division is considered an instructional league, the teams play a full schedule of games with a double-elimination playoff and an All-Star game using the same rules as the Cunningham division.
Players in the Knight division are eligible to "play up" in the Cunningham division as the need for substitutes arises but Cunningham players may not play in the Knight division.
Colt Level
The Colt league is for boys aged fifteen and sixteen and can be anywhere from one to three teams depending on the number of boys that tryout and the number of managers that volunteer for the season.
The Colt League teams participate in the Western Dupage Baseball League. There are two divisions in that league for fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds: "A" and "AA". Both divisions play on regulation size baseball diamonds utilizing IHSA (high school) rules with teams from communities like Roselle, Bloomingdale and Glen Ellyn just to name a few. The difference between the two divisions is "AA" teams are allowed an unlimited number of players that are rostered on high school teams in the current year while the "A" division teams are only allowed a maximum of 5 high school players. If a player played on a high school team the previous year but is not currently on a high school team, he is not considered a high school player.
A one-day tryout and draft is held in mid-May for the Colt division. Players are selected at the discretion of the team managers and the boys are notified within a couple of days as to their status.
Both divisions practice a couple of times each week, space and time permitting. The "AA" division only competes on weekends while the "A" division could potentially compete during the week. Both divisions have a single-elimination playoff that takes place during the last week of July.