By Nick Creely
From humble beginnings, the Pakenham Pumas Baseball Club – nestled within Toomuc Recreational Reserve – is an important part of the fabric of the community.
And the club will celebrate where it has come from, its successes and its bright future when the club comes together for its 20-year anniversary on Saturday 21 September at the Outlook Community Centre.
The club was the brainchild of two gentlemen by the name of Scott Radford and Michael Chilcott, because one wanted to be a pitcher and the other a catcher while playing for the St Chads/Bonbeach Baseball Club, and at the time these opportunities didn’t exist.
The two men then took it into their own hands, and with the help of a few mates from work and the cricket club the Pumas started to build a small group of players.
Darren Coates, who has been with the club since its early days and still plays with the Pumas today, reflected on his introduction to the club he now calls home.
“Scott Radford visited Ausport to collect some training supplies and asked yours truly if I wanted a hit,” he said.
“I did and brought the other two Coates bros and the step brother Ian Madden with me – Ian was our inaugural club coach.
“Also joining the club was Paul James; he was playing for Berwick and was looking for a change, and heard on the grapevine that Pakenham was starting a team and him, Greg Shields and another much loved player still on our roster, Simon Ferris came and tried on the black and grey uniform.
“From memory Scott took up the role of president, Michael was vice president, Tracey Radford was treasurer and Michael’s wife Julie was secretary – I’m a bit fuzzy on that but I think I’m right.”
The Pumas played its first season at the Maryknoll Recreational Reserve, before relocating. However, Coates said that it was the beginning of a successful relationship with a local summer club.
“We were only there for a year from memory as our tenure was cut short at the end of the season,” he said.
“We had two teams, B Grade and I think E Grade. E-Grade sounds right but again I’m not sure.
“A lot of guys in the B Grade were recruited straight up and didn’t really reside in Pakenham; a lot came from Berwick’s summer club.
“And with this both the Pakenham Winter Club and the Berwick Summer Club struck up a really good rapport with one another, most winter guys went off too Berwick to play summer and vice versa. Over time we had a fair number of Berwick Summer boys at our club.”
Coates said that the next phase of the club’s history at the Pakenham Upper Recreational Reserve and eventually into Toomuc Recreational Reserve was an important part of their story and growth.
Coates had stepped down as club coach and B Grade manager, the club had brought in a new recruit in Graeme John from Berwick, and the Pumas brought in more sides.
“It was a left handers paradise for sure, and if you were playing right field you needed a good set of gumboots,” he said.
“In the early years we always seem to make the finals and fall short, our main nemesis being Cheltenham.
“Somewhere about here we enlisted the boys from the Dandenong North Cricket Club to form a third side, this side was 100 per cent cricketers and was led by David Bell.
“It was also about the time we started getting involved with the Gippsland Championships. We stayed at Pakky Upper for a few seasons at least, and in this period Scott Radford had rallied the council and we had construction started of the two diamonds we play on today.
“We moved from Pakky Upper and actually found our way onto the junior footy ground and Little Aths area at the Pakky Rec Reserve.
“I remember we scooped some church pews from somewhere and they came in handy as team benches at one stage.
“Whilst we were waiting for the ground to be completed we also found ourselves playing at Sweeney Reserve. It was about now that Scott Radford left the club and Tim Armour took over as president, Wes Millar as treasurer and Nikki Coates as secretary.
“I think I found my way back to managing the B Grade side about now and again making finals most years with no success.
“I could go on and on, but that’s about what I can remember and how we started, the early years.
“There are loads of stories but the rest is history, the club almost came to its knees at one point, in fact it was, and them some really dedicated people came along and resurrected what had sort of become the shell it once was. Time and effort was put into a junior program and the club has never looked back.”
James Kinsella – a former president and much-respected member of the club – has been around the club for just over a decade.
He said the club had been forced to make some tough decisions to keep the doors open in the past, but now believes the Pumas are as strong as they’ve ever been.
“When I first came to the club in 2008 we had one senior team and struggled to field a side each week,” he said.
“It was that struggle that spurred the club’s decision to try something they had never done before and push for a juniors team in 2009 and despite results not going our way we also managed to field two senior teams.
“During the off season we were approached out of the blue by Travis Hough who offered to be our club coach for 2010. Over the next seven years with Huffy as our winter club coach we had a number of successes including our first ever club flag in 2011 and a B1 flag the following year earning us a promotion to A Grade.
“We worked hard off the field with recruiting as well and by 2014 had five senior sides and three junior sides.
“As well as building our members up we also focused on improving our grounds. In particular during the early years when we only played during winter we used the summer to carry out a number of projects.
“The biggest of these was a weekend where we created the cut out and enclosed the dugouts on the main diamond and built the scorer’s shed.
“Previously we had only running lines on the main diamond and scorer’s had no shelter. With little funds available to us these projects were only possible due to our fantastic members who volunteered their time to provide all the labour for these and many other of the works around the club.”
It takes the Pumas to its current day success, where the club continues to build from year-to-year and develop an even stronger reputation in the region.
“In 2015 we entered into the summer competition for the first time and although we originally planned on entering just one team and expanding from there, due to overwhelming interest from our members we ended up with three senior sides,” Kinsella said.
“With Shaun Fahy agreeing to take on the coaching for our inaugural summer side we did better than we could have ever dreamed of, winning the 2015/16 Division 3 flag.
“Since that 2008 season where we were almost unable to field a side it has always been a focus to build our junior members up to supplement our senior numbers.
“We have always strived to provide a great environment for junior players whether they have ambitions to play at state level or are brand new to the game.”
