(Seguin) — Seguin’s championship summer-league baseball team is gearing up for another big year.
The Seguin River Monsters are the current champions of the Texas Collegiate League.
Parks and Recreation Director Jack Jones says the city of Seguin is again offering a deal that will allow the city’s Smokey Joe Williams Field at Fairgrounds Park to serve as the home of the River Monsters.
“The past two seasons, we’ve entered three month agreements with the previous owner of the River Monsters Mike Gigliotti and for the past two seasons’ three month agreements, the team was sold this fall to Tommy and Kristin Stephens and as you know, the new owners have requested a longtime deal with the city and we need more time to work through those things that we talked about and maybe a work session in April to discuss it with them in a public meeting but the agreement is similar to what you saw the past two seasons,” said Jones.
As mentioned, the team’s new owners are Tommy and Kristin Stephens. The pair told members of the Seguin City Council that they are excited about the upcoming season, which will give the River Monsters a chance to defend their title.
“We are looking forward to this season. We have several new players from out of the state of Texas that will be coming in and spending some time in Seguin also local ball players as well. All the staff is the same. We are adding some new interns so a lot of exciting things going on,” said Tommy.
Spring recently arrived on the calendar, but Stephens says they are just weeks away from the start of TCL’s summer schedule.
“The media night is May 28 that we have a mixer with the chamber of commerce and then opening day is May 30,” said Tommy.
Kristin Stephens says they are not only excited about the River Monsters’ schedule this year, but they are also looking forward to more partnerships and events here in Seguin. She says they want to see the ballpark used year-round.
“Our vision for this team is — I mean Mike has done a fabulous job so far. We want to grow on that. We want to expand. We want to be a part of this community. So, we’ve bought the bus. We bought the team a bus this year so they will be traveling in style this year. We’ve talked to Jack and there are a lot of things we want to add to the field and make this not just a baseball team for two and a half months out of the year, but we want to do things at least once every month through the year. So, we are not just the baseball in the summer time. We want to have movies. We want to have Boo Fest. We want to do Christmas activities so we want to do things for the community not just baseball,” said Stephens.
The city council recently approved the new agreement with the team. The city also wants to look at making some additional improvements to the ballpark, which has a rich history in Seguin. Jones says the club would like to have a longer term agreement for use of the facility. The city is expected to schedule a workshop meeting that will allow the council to get an update on plans for the facility and what’s needed to make it viable for a more long term commitment from the ball club.