Little League World Series cancelled for 2020, BG East players heartbroken

The Little League World Series announced there would be no World Series game this year and also announced that all of this year’s regional tournaments will be cancelled, but noted that the events would return in their entirety in 2021.

The decision itself may not be all that surprising, but it’s still disappointing for little league players across the country, including right here in Bowling Green.

Chris Cohron, the president of Bowling Green East’s Little League program, says he hopes players are able to learn from the experience.

“We had unfortunately been anticipating this,” Cohron said. “The logistics of being able to play not only the Little League World Series but the regional tournaments which hopefully would have been for our league at the Great Lakes Regional in Indianapolis, the logistics of that with all that’s going on with corona made it virtually impossible.

“While we were very disappointed with our league since our league has been to the Little League World Series three out of the last five years, we thought we had a 12-year-old group this year that would have been highly competitive, and obviously it takes an immense amount of luck to get to Williamsport,” he said referring to Williamsport, Pa. where the World Series is played every year.

“But we thought we had a very talented group of 12 year olds,” Cohron said. “They won state as 10 year olds and had gotten to the district finals as 11 year olds and were very much looking forward to seeing what kind of run they would have been able to make this year.”

The team had started practicing before the pandemic spread to the United States.

“We are still hopeful that we will be able to have some sort of league here at the local level,” he said. “They’ve encouraged us to potentially try to play a district tournament and a state tournament if time allows.”

Local Little League officials will meet soon to discuss plans for a season this year.

“I think the important thing is for these young boys to put things in perspective. While it means as much to them as anything in the world, when you see what’s going on across the United States today with the tragedy of corona hitting our country and worldwide, I think we are trying to encourage them to continue to work hard and hopefully in the future, this setback will inspire them to do even greater things,” Cohron said.

“They are very disappointed,” he said, adding his own 12-year-old son is “truly heartbroken” about the cancellation.