2025 President's Address

This season has been the hardest that I can remember, but also one of the most rewarding. It has been a challenging one in terms of playing numbers in the higher grades, but we have an awesome number of juniors. At the start of this season, we lost several players from last year's 1st and 2nd grade squads, but we have been able to get valuable game time into several players under the age of 18.

We were unable to field a second grade team, but with the support of other clubs, we had a number of players who were able to play at that level through Vikings, Indians and Bears. In the upside and moving forward, I believe that we have a number of very experienced senior players returning to the club next season and they will form the nucleus of a strong 2nd grade team next season, with the intention to keep our younger players pushing into 1st grade and forming their own nucleus in that grade for the next decade to come.

I feel that our young players have improved out of sight this season and I have no doubt that they will be top level A grade ballplayers in the years to come. I would also like to take this opportunity to announce the Developing Eagles off season program, which will be run by Andrew Tharle. This includes a one-on-one discussion with the 15 to 18 year old players to identify areas where they will benefit most from training and a weekly program which will be tailored to their needs. The sessions will begin four weeks after the schoolboys tournament concludes.

We had in previous years only had two imports play for the club, but this year we had five. Through building relationships with quality Japanese players over the past five seasons, we are now a destination club in Canberra for Japanese players. I believe that our Japanese players have not only taught our younger players to play better, but also to be better baseball citizens and appreciate that the game is bigger than any one player, team or competition.

Two of our four senior teams made the grand final and four out of six junior teams made the grand final, including in the Little League major age group where the two Eagles teams played each other in the grand final. That's 60% of the players at our club playing in a grand final this season which is an amazing achievement. We also won the junior club championship for the third consecutive year.

We undertook a renovation of the Kambah baseball diamond and the weather was not kind to us in Spring, pushing the work by the ACT government well into the season. Due to a lack of resources and the uneven nature of the field, the committee made a decision to remove the base paths as they were constantly flooding and we were losing game time every season. The government was intending to replace our entire infield with new turf, but this was not possible due to the weather delays and lack of available material. We did however repaint the murals on the dugouts, which I'm sure you will agree look excellent. I think that it will take at least another 12 months of work until the diamond looks great, but we will get there. Special thanks to Cal McNicol for doing the early grunt work on this and to Shelley Taylor for continuing it. As always, more people with shovels are always welcome and at least a dozen people in this room were excellent contributors at our working bees.

I'd like to thank the committee, and in particular Kelly Hackett for her dedication to running the canteens. Thanks to Pete Corcoran for stepping into the Senior President's role and to BJ Lentell for dedicating his time as a first grade coach, as well as Cal and Dan for coaching, and of course, all of the brilliant scorers that we have.

I hope that you have a relaxing off season and I hope to see every single one of you in October this year.