Printz’s passion hits home

The typical response Pakenham Baseball president Rob Printz receives when he tells people he spends his Saturday afternoons representing the Pakenham Pumas in baseball is: “They play baseball in Pakenham!?”
“No one knows there is a baseball ground in Pakenham and it is a bit hard when you’re a minority sport hidden away at the back here,” Rob said.
The hidden place Rob, 34, is referring to is the Toomuc Recreation Reserve. For 10 years Pakenham has had a baseball team and for six of those years, the Pumas have operated out of the reserve.
But unless you knew what you were looking for, the chances of stumbling across the two baseball diamonds are remote.
The baseball diamonds in the Toomuc Recreation Reserve are locked away behind two of Pakenham’s most well-known sporting venues – the Pakenham Football Ground and the YMCA’s Cardinia Life.
If you can avoid the abundance of traffic and ignore the buzzing scene of activity surrounding the complex then the road that splits the two prominent venues will bring its users to a pint-sized roundabout that has three exits.
Two of the exists are newly paved roads that lead to the home of the Pakenham Junior Football Club and the outdoor netball courts, the other exist is an uneven dirt road that veers to the right into a clearing that shows little promise of life or activity.
If not for a small sign on the roundabout labelled “baseball” with an arrow pointing right, anyone could be forgiven for thinking that the sporting complex ventured no further.
Turning right and dodging potholes around the dirt track you reach the Pakenham Little Athletics complex and the two baseball diamonds belonging to the Pakenham Pumas.
Despite the obscurity of the reserve matching the obscurity of the sport in semi-rural Victoria, Rob is just happy that he has a club.
In 2005, Rob ’s first year at Pakenham, the club was staring at the curtains.
The then team president and manager Nathan Mitchell stepped down because of work commitments and long-serving players began moving on.
“When you can’t put a team on a park then that’s pretty close to folding,” Rob said.
“Surprisingly that year, we only forfeited two games out of 18 but we were playing with seven or eight players and you need nine so you’re at a disadvantage straight away.
“At that time we were playing really strong teams. We lost a game 30-0, possibly even more, and it became demoralising.
“But I try to blank the thrashings out. There is nothing you can do but say, ‘alright lets just keep going forward, next year will be better,’” Rob recalled.
But the next year didn’t get better and the Pumas were so light on for numbers that the departing Mitchell called on Rob to take over as president of the club after only arriving from Sale earlier that year.
“He (Mitchell) said to me ‘We need to keep this team going, can you come and be president or treasurer or something like that’.” He said.
Rob agreed.
“I put my hand up and became president and I just tried working through just to keep the club going,” the Pakenham resident said.
Since becoming president Rob has not only taken over the reins at Pakenham but has also become the dog that pulls the sled. “Without a doubt, without Rob the club would not be here,” Pumas coach Travis Hough said.
“He does things no one knows how to do like looking for grants on the net, doing all the online stuff and going to meetings, all the stuff no one wants to do. Every club needs those kinds of people and most clubs have three or four; we have Rob,” he said.
Hough spent his entire baseball playing life at Dandenong, but he joined Pakenham this season after a game last year convinced him to come on board.
“I came down and watched one game last year and these guys had their arses handed to them but instead of moping around they were laughing and having a good time. I approached Rob and said if you guys haven’t teed up a coach by September I would like to come down and help out.”
Rob jumped at the idea and since that time Rob and Hough have begun to turn things around.
In round one, Pakenham had its first win in two years with a 12-9 win over Oakleigh.
“The boys were pretty excited… I’ve never seen guys like that before; it was like we had won a grand final they were that excited.
“Anybody that was thinking we’re just going to get smashed again immediately changed their thinking… and it showed as we won five games (for the season),” Hough said.
Rob also developed Pakenham’s first junior program last year and this year they extended the program to two teams.
“Our main goal is to get juniors and we’re doing that,” he said.
Whether it be through come and try days, sticking information around schools or giving each member 100 flyers and asking them to drop them round to nearby houses, the club is slowly being rewarded for persistence. “The best thing for me is seeing juniors going onto representative leve.”
Although the junior program only began two years ago, already Pakenham is producing budding youngsters.
Jesse Hunter, Aiden Willis and Liam van Richardson all started out at Pakenham and while van Richardson has moved to Berwick, Hunter and Willis continue to dominate at representative levels.
But despite the improvement in performance, the Pumas off-field problems remain a concern.
The Pumas have no clubrooms or home run fence and instead of dugouts they have park benches.
It is the only ground in the complex that does not have lighting and they share the canteen and tiny storage facilities with the Little Athletics.
Players have to walk through open drains before they can reach the field and when on the field the games and practises have to be paused while school kids and afternoon strollers walk through the field, unaware that baseballs are being hit only metres away from them. “Facilities are a big thing. If you don’t have facilities you lose people after a while, so it’s a slow process.
As Rob and Hough sat on plastic chairs passing the evening away by sharing baseball stories, they could not help but stare over at the junior football club where floodlights illuminated the oval and cries of playful laughter drifted over.
“They have 800 kids over there on a Friday and we’re struggling to get nine,” Hough said. “Take nothing away from what they’ve got over there, they’ve earned it and they’ve done the hard yards, they need facilities… but so do we.”
Rather than accept that baseball will never succeed in country Victoria where football dominates the winter, and cricket the summer, Rob is determined to plough on.
“When you get knocked back you’ve got to just keep going,” he said.
“I love the sport and I love playing. Anyone can come and try it out. It is a sport for all shapes, ages and sizes. We’ve got a 45-year-old who played his first season last year and we’ve got all the equipment you’ll need. So why not?”