Help the Highline Bears bring Semi-Pro Baseball back to the local community

The Highline Bears Baseball Organization is a new expansion team in the Pacific International League (PIL), and they’re trying to raise money to kick-off a first season at Steve Cox Memorial Park in White Center.
That’s right – semi-pro baseball is coming back to the area! But they need your help – click below to learn how YOU can pitch in (pun intended):

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bring-back-semi-pro-baseball-to-our-community

The first game will be Saturday, May 30 against the Snoqualmie Hurricanes at Steve Cox Memorial Park, and tickets can be purchased here:

http://highlinebears.com/schedule-tickets/

Here’s more info on the new team:

Founded in 1992, the league is considered by many to be the premier Summer Collegiate Baseball league in the Northwest. Sanctioned by the National Baseball Congress (NBC), most PIL players are NCAA eligible and are unpaid in order to maintain their eligibility. The PIL is different from many other summer collegiate baseball leagues in that the league also allows former professionals and college graduates to participate.
In the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s White Center Stadium (now Steve Cox Memorial Park) was the home of men’s semi-professional baseball and professional fast pitch softball teams. Several hundred adults, kids and families would fill the stands and sit along the side fences watching a high level of baseball under the lights on Friday and Saturday nights. The stadium hosted former professional baseball players, college athletes with dreams of making it to the big’s and men’s fast pitch teams like Pay n’ Pak and the King & His Court.
After the original wood stadium burnt down in the late 1970’s, baseball slowly faded from the Highline area. Today the park has been remodeled, dedicated to fallen community leader & police officer Steve Cox and is home to little leaguers, high school & men’s senior leagues but the stand are far from full. The once packed, community centered stadium rarely sees a high level of competitive baseball. The stands of the stadium can still hold over a thousand spectators but haven’t seen that type of crowds in decades. The Highline Bears hope to bring a high level of baseball back to the Highline & White Center area.
All contributions made through our IndieGoGo campaign will help fund the teams expenses. We are a sponsorship and donation based organization and we need you help. All contributions will be used for; field rentals, umpire fees, tournament fees, player uniforms, baseball equipment and travel expenses.
What We Need & What You Get
The Highline Bears have a budget of $50,000 that we need to fill by the middle of May. Most other teams that run like ours will run on a budget of $80,000-$150,000. We have limited our travel trips and expenses by having staff members volunteer their time during our first season. Our plan to fill this budget is by attracting local small businesses to sponsor, doing multiple small fund raisers and using our IndieGoGo campaign where we hope to raise at least $20,000.
Perks Of Contributing:
We offer a lot of different perks we offer in return for you contribution to our organization. They include:

• A Personalized Thank You Tweet
• Game Tickets
• Personalized Thank You Team Photo
• Team T-shirts
• Season Tickets
• A Team Plaque
• Team Jersey
• Be on the field for pre-game batting practice
• Being an Honorary Coach

Risks & Challenges
We have a lot of challenges we have already overcome. Being a new team and launching our team as late as December this has been a huge project.
We first had to find players to fill our roster. Most summer teams start recruiting their players in September and have their roster filled by December. We listed over 500 prospects and went down the list contacting everyone we could. We are pleased to say that once we started getting the word out about our team we had a great response. We feel we have filled out a competitive roster with 25 great role models for the community.
Our next challenge was getting access to the stadium, which is managed by our local county parks department. While they were very skeptical of our idea at first we were diligent about making sure we could show them we were serious about our goal. We were able to work and partner with other user groups and have been able to secure 16 times for home games at our stadium.
The final challenge we face is raising enough funds to make this project not only happen but happen in the right way. To bring the community together and be taken seriously we need to put a great product on the field. To do this we need to have funds to help pay for field fees, umpires, team equipment, marketing materials and travel expenses. We need your help to make this possible.
Other Ways You Can Help
We wanted to make sure that anyone could contribute to this project so we made a lot of different perk packages. If you can only contribute $1, great! If you can contribute more, awesome! Ever little bit helps our mission.
Whether you contribute or not we would appreciate you sharing this with as many of your friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, Email and word of mouth.
Thank you for your consideration in helping us reach our goal!

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