Low Mountain, Pinon join summer baseball league

Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series featuring the Chinle Youth Baseball League.

CHINLE

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

In 2010, Wesley Ben started coaching T-ball in nearby Pinon and for two years he did that. It was his way of staying active.

“I grew up playing sports,” Ben said. “I used to play all sports – basketball, football, baseball and volleyball.”

When he was about to start his third season with the Chinle Youth Baseball League, Ben’s late son asked him why he was coaching the youth in Pinon and not in his community of Low Mountain.
“I told him that I would do it if he would help me,” Ben said. “A couple of months later he left us. It was very sudden, it was a car accident.”

That proposal from his late son, Qudry Mike Ben, still resonates with him.

“I went by what he told me to do,” he said. “I’m now working with our kids in Low Mountain.”

In that first year they had 78 kids signed up and for the most part they used their own money to field a couple of teams from T-ball to the 16U age group.

Since then Ben has used other resources to help pay for the expenses incurred with the Low Mountain Chapter using funds from the Healthy Diné Nation Act of 2014, the tax imposed on junk food, to pay for their registration fees.

The teams’ uniforms were purchased thanks to the Pinon Health Promotions. Part of their agreement was to wear a logo geared at “stamping out bullying.”

“I had to go there in person,” Ben said. “Calling them was not going to work.”

As a person who does not give up that easy, Ben says being part of the CYBL is a positive change for his community.

“Most of our community members don’t have electricity and there are dirt roads all the way around,” he said. “There are a lot of graffiti and a lot of gangs.”

Like Ben, Pinon coach Samuel Chee says there are a lot of benefits being part of the CYBL. With some of his 12U players grasping the fundamentals of baseball at a young age he said it will help the high school program.

“I’m going to be working with them until they reach 14 years old, then the high school team will take over,” Chee said. “They’re developing motor skills and they are getting high up there.”

---