Five families are already signed up to participate and are expected to take in nine players for this year’s season that officially begins on May 30. There are also three more families that may be joining the program taking an additional seven players.
Finding hosts families is a long-term problem, according to team officials.
“This is our number one issue we’ve had since day one of this organization,” said King’s general manager and pitching coach Rick White. “We haven’t been able to get host families like we thought we would, like everybody else in the league does.”
The team, which recruits players from colleges across the country, has been in Springfield since 2014 and has enlisted the help of host families since its second season and has also lodged team members in Wittenberg apartments in the past.
Families interested in participating are required to complete a questionnaire on the team’s website and have separate bathrooms and rooms for players that are being lodged.
“It’s almost like having a foreign exchange student,” said White, who is also a co-owner of the team. “They come in, stay with the host family throughout the summer and the host family treats them just like their own kid while they are there.”
Many of the families that are currently participating in the host program have been involved in the past including Allen Collins who along with his wife participated in the program last year
“We were involved with going to see a lot of the games, then it was just a natural progression to go ahead and offer to have a couple of the boys stay with us,” he said.
Collins, who first heard about the program from a friend, took in players Jett Swetland and Andrew Fishel last year and is expecting to host Swetland again this summer.
“That’s the beauty of this, you really make some great friends because a lot of parents make the effort to come to the games and are very appreciative that we take care of the kids in the way we do,” he said. “From the day they move in we treat them like our own.”
White, who used to be a professional baseball player and pitched for the Cincinnati Reds in 2006, says that he is not sure why people haven’t really caught onto the hosting program and that the team currently has Wittenberg apartments on hold in case they are not able get enough host families to cover all of the players.
The team, which follows NCAA regulations, moved to Carleton Davidson Stadium in 2014 from its previous location in Slippery Rock, Pa after being purchased by Carmela’s Pizzeria owner Ron Heineman. It is currently under new management since being purchased by a local group in 2016.
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