For the first time in a long time, nine and ten year olds played summer league competitive baseball with the word “Blaine” emblazoned across their chests, marking the first season of Blaine’s new 10U Cal Ripken team.
The group of 13 highly motivated young athletes just finished their first summer season, competing in a flurry of tournaments over the last two months.
Blaine High School varsity coach Hunter Anderson helped a group of local coaches to revitalize the program. Like any good coach, Anderson wanted to get a pipeline of youth baseball solidified in Blaine to create a clear pathway of competitive baseball from elementary to high school.
That’s when head coach Preston Bouma came in. The Birch Bay father of five boys – all in or graduated from the Blaine school district – and a class of 1994 Blaine High School graduate himself, wanted to give kids a local option for summer ball. Many of Blaine’s talented young athletes had previously signed up for other select summer league teams outside of Blaine, Bouma said.
Bouma was joined by coaches Brent Greene, Brett Jacobs and Bill Beckett to lead the team.
“The idea came from wanting to keep Blaine kids together in a competitive atmosphere to stop losing so many kids to all the select teams,” Bouma said.
The best high school teams keep local kids together, going up through multiple levels and summer after summer of competitive baseball, Bouma said. It’s a pattern Anderson hopes to instill in the baseball program, and one that head football coach Andy Olson and girls basketball coach Vic Wolffis have been doing for years.
“If these kids have intentions of playing high school sports together, let’s keep them together right now because ultimately the goal is to win at the high school level,” Bouma said.
In the team’s first year, Bouma said they “took their lumps,” but still made huge improvements, and the team is excited to return next summer.
“These kids came a long way over two months. We started scoring runs. We started making outs. Our pitching improved. We figured out positions,” Bouma said. “The kids’ attitude the entire time was great.”
Bouma’s goal for next season is to play more games and tournaments against local teams, instead of, as he said, “driving past 150 baseball fields to travel halfway across the state to go play in a tournament.”
More Cal Ripken league teams are expected to pop up in Nooksack, Ferndale and other cities around Whatcom County, which Bouma hopes will encourage even more Blaine kids to join. The goal for next year is an earlier tryout date, potentially sometime in the spring of 2026, and to expand to more age groups.
The logistics and finances of the team are handled through Blaine Youth Sports (BYS), the local nonprofit organizing K-8 sports since 2018. Bouma said his goal is to keep player fees to a minimum with the help of BYS. Travel baseball is a notoriously expensive sport, and Bouma said BYS helps lower financial barriers.
“We want to build that community bond with all these different families and kids. We’re growing up together, so we might as well stick together and represent Blaine,” Bouma said. “I’ve been a Blaine Borderite since the day I was born. I have a passion for the orange and black.”
For more information on next year’s Cal Ripken summer league baseball, contact blaineyouthsports@gmail.com.
