PRESS RELEASE – It’s official; the Florida League will be bringing baseball back to the city of Winter Haven in 2011. The Winter Haven Loggerheads have signed on to be the Florida League’s sixth team. This will expand the current setup to six teams and allows the league to extend its offerings of great baseball talent to another part of Central Florida.
The Loggerheads will play at Chain of Lakes Park in Winter Haven, the former Cleveland Indian’s spring training site. The park received its name from the surrounding lakes, which can be seen from the top seats in the grandstand. It is a gorgeous facility and the Florida League is proud to add it to our already great lineup of stadiums. The Loggerheads team received its name from the large concentration of Loggerhead sea turtles found along Florida’s coasts. It provides an excellent mix of creativity and name recognition and will bring an exciting new mascot to the league, a loggerhead turtle named Clutch.
The Loggerheads will be owned and operated by the Starting 9 Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The President of the Starting 9, Eddie Welling, is extremely excited about becoming part of the Florida League. Welling remarked, “The Starting 9 Foundation is thrilled to be joining the Florida League and bringing summer baseball back to Winter Haven. With all the great baseball resources in the state of Florida and the terrific baseball fan base in the Winter Haven community, it was only a matter of how and when. Thanks to the great efforts by the City of Winter Haven, Florida League President Sara Whiting and Vice President Rob Sitz, we look forward to recruiting the nation’s top baseball talent to Winter Haven for the summer of 2011.”
This will provide an opportunity for 27 more quality college baseball players to fine-tune their skill sets in the Florida League.
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