HANAPEPE — Coaches like the late Ralph Soto are few and far in between, but a person like Soto is truly hard to find. The West Kaua‘i Youth Baseball League celebrated its opening day for both the mustang and bronco
HANAPEPE — Coaches like the late Ralph Soto are few and far in between, but a person like Soto is truly hard to find.
The West Kaua‘i Youth Baseball League celebrated its opening day for both the mustang and bronco divisions yesterday at Hanapepe Ballpark.
The Hanapepe Youth Baseball Association dedicated its field and season to Coach Ralph, a celebrated westside coach, who coached so long that some of the existing coaches on the youth baseball squads were coached by Soto.
His wife, Bernie gave a bone-chilling speech, after being presented with a special clock and lei from the Hanapepe Youth Baseball Association.
Kaua‘i Region Director Pat Baniaga gave a short speech about coach Ralph and Sheldon Soto, Coach Ralph’s first grandson, threw out the first pitch, which was caught by Cory Soto, Coach Ralph’s youngest grandson actively playing youth baseball.
For the first time in about 10 years, the bronco regionals will be held on Kaua‘i and next year as well.
“That’s some really good news for Kaua‘i and our kids will get to play against some of the best youth base-ball players in their own backyard,” West Kaua‘i Youth Baseball president Paul Pancho said.
This season, Pancho mentioned that recruitment started off slow, but picked up towards the deadline. He also said that a lot of new things will be happening with the program.
“Educating the coaches is our main priority, we eventually want to start drug testing and doing background checks on our coaches, plus we had a coaches clinic, which helped us out a lot,” Pancho said. The 2005 teams include the Kekaha Angels (mus-tang) coached by Howard Frasco, the Kekaha Indians (bronco) coached by Andrew Lazaro Jr., the Waimea Blue Jays (mustang and bronco) coached by John Nakashima (mus-tang) and Bruce Hiraoka (bronco), the Hanapepe Cubs (mustang and bronco) coached by Lance Parongao (mustang) and Dale Soto (bronco), the Kalawai Cardinals and Yankees (mustang and bronco) coached by Nathan Nix, Larry Ephan (mustang), John Moniz and Edward Horner (bronco), the Koloa Athletics (mus-tang) coached by David Bukoski, and the Koloa Astros (bronco), coached by Ahren Kaneshiro.
The mustang division plays every Saturday and Wednesday and the broncos go at it every Tuesday and Saturday at various westside fields.
