Coles Little League Baseball

History of Coles The Coles Baseball League got its start playing baseball on two sixty foot fields located behind Coles Elementary School in the mid '70's. The league was built back then by folks like Cora Plaster, who enjoyed telling the story of how she spent Mother's Day, 1979 at the landfill building the dugouts on what was the first Coles field at the Landfill. Coaches and administrators such as Carl Gatlin, Bob Penn, Bob Clearwater, Paul Nicely, Bill Hair, Harold Meade, Janice Smith, Brenda Hutchinson, Cathy Deane, and John O'Neal gave of their time and ability to build a worthwhile youth baseball program in mid-county. In 1980, then District 10 Administrator, Warren Richards, negotiated a deal where the well and septic subdivisions that had grown along the Route 234 corridor in mid Price William County would join with basically barren territory ceded by the Dale City Little League and the Dumfries-Triangle-Quantico Little League to become Coles Little League, under the management of the folks who ran the independent Coles Baseball League. In 1981, the Coles Little League played its first full season as a chartered Little League program. At that time, the league was still relatively independent and "hands-on", playing on three fields provided, not by the Park Authority, but by the folks at the landfill. With the help of contributions from the landfill "tipping fund", the league was eventually able to create a four field complex on the reclaimed landfill grounds at the eventually named Independent Hill Community Park. Bob Foubare was the first President of the Coles Little League, overseeing the program that then had eight Major (9-12) and six Senior (13-15) teams. The registration fee back then was less than the Little League mandated twenty dollars per player. Registration continued to grow through 1985, but soon began to falter with the rise of alternate spring sports. With this decline came the loss of dollars to fund the league, and it wasn't until the late 80's, when Jaime Salgado took over as president, that the league began to get out of its financial doldrums. Jaime got more folks involved in the management of the league, as before then, most jobs to run the league were being handled only by a handful of folks. These new recruits joined with the league veterans and were charged to advertise the Coles program in their communities and get more involvement through the schools. With the tighter budgetary controls Jaime put in place, the league soon found itself on a strong financial and ethical footing. One also cannot say too much about the multiple contributions of Mike Holupka. In addition to coaching, in the spring of 1984, he brought in the heavy equipment and funded the project to build a drainage system for the then three fields at Independent Hill Community Park, so that a light rain wouldn't wash out three days worth of games. Later, in 1999, Mike also helped foot the bill to rebuild the fourth field, then known as Rusciolleli,