A Little League Renaissance

There’s a circus-like atmosphere at Cindy Mysels Park as families arrive in droves for team pictures and Opening Day ceremonies. Parking spots are scarce. Excitement fills the air.

A young softball player approaches the park with her mother and sees a teammate balancing a bright blue globe of cotton candy.

“Ooooh, cotton candy!” she exclaims hopefully. The Gulf Coast Little League’s Opening Day is a community happening, bolstered by pleasant winter temperatures and a deep blue sky, dotted with cotton candy clouds.

Cindy Mysels Park is one of Collier County’s neighborhood parks. It's tucked into the Naples Manor neighborhood, on Warren Street, just down the road and around the bend from Lely High School. Mysels is memorialized there for her enduring dedication to the East Naples park.

The park is going through a rebirth. So are its inhabitants, the Gulf Coast Little League Baseball and Softball programs.

The park is showing the wear and tear of decades of runs, hits and errors. It has not been maintained to a high standard. Not many facilities upgrades have taken place over the years. But county leaders say that is changing.

The execution of a facilities improvement plan is on District One County Commissioner Rick LoCastro’s checklist. The county is stepping up to the plate with infrastructure improvements to this and other neighborhood parks, while vowing to practice preventive and predictive park maintenance going forward.

“Deputy County Manager, Dan Rodriguez, has worked really hard with me on the parks,” Commissioner Rick LoCastro said. "We are much more proactive on the care and maintenance of our parks. When we noticed some of these negligent areas in one or two of our parks, Dan and I and the team went out to every single park in District One. And I know he did the same thing in other districts. We started in District One because it was our initiative. We have the funds for the care and maintenance of the parks. So, we shouldn’t just fix stuff when it breaks. We should have regular checks and maintenance. We have a great staff in parks and recreation. They’re motivated. We’ve gotten organized with some leadership at the top with Dan and me and some others. It’s fulfilling to see the progress. Some of it is stuff you can’t see. I was disappointed that I missed Opening Day. I really wanted to shake the hands of our parks and recreation folks who were out there.”

“Commissioner Rick LoCastro has been a great supporter,” said Dan Rodriguez, who was on hand to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day. “Rick spearheaded some of the renovations that we’ve seen in our parks and recreation division. Especially at the site here off of Warren Street. We’ve come a long way from years of deferred maintenance. The Board of County Commissioners and our County Manager, Mark Isackson, have dedicated the resources and made this a priority in their fiscal year 2022 budget. Mark specifically put aside $1.2 million for the upgrade of these parks, which includes replacing batting cages, adding bleachers, and redoing the fields.”

There have been a number of recent improvements to Cindy Mysels Park.

"The structures that are onsite,” Rodriguez said “the buildings, the roof systems have been upgraded. If you look at this park, it’s beautiful. Great improvements to the irrigation systems. The lighting systems have been retrofitted. They’ve really shown that by keeping up with preventive/predictive maintenance and then infusing capital, we can raise the level of service we provide to all of our residents in Collier County at our parks and recreation facilities."

"Those parks should be pristine,” LoCastro emphasized, “and we have the funds for it. It was a focus of my campaign, and with the parks and rec team. It’s their focus as well. But sometimes you need a little organization and a little military precision. Now we have both."

Of course, at the heart of everything the GCLL does are the children and parents of the community. If Open Day is any indication, it appears everyone is buying in wholeheartedly. But it hasn’t been easy. With dwindling participation, Gulf Coast Little League was in peril.

“I think it was in danger of folding,” said Ryan McQuade, new president of Gulf Coast Little League. He’s been on the job for a year now, trying to bring the league back to its prior glory.

"We are trying to do it,” said McQuade, who teaches chemistry and physics at Golden Gate High School. "We’ve gone from five teams last year to 15 teams this year. We have 175 kids. Adding softball was our biggest addition. We’re the only league here in Naples that has softball right now. We have about 50 softball girls.”