Crestwood Collegiate League gives athletes opportunity to compete at college level

CBS News

10 hours ago

A relatively new baseball league is hitting ballparks around Chicago's South Side and southwest suburbs.
It's certainly not the first summer league for college or college-bound players, but it's definitely not the same as the others.
"Man, it's just a great league to be in, good competition, good teams. Every time you're coming out to the ballpark, you know it's going to be a fun day," Billy Rogus said.
Rogus plays for the Windy City Baseball Club in the Crestwood Collegiate League—a summer wood bat baseball league—now in their second season, filling a void with a little different philosophy about how they run the league and who can play in it.
"We're not trying to get you to play 100 games. We're trying to get you to play 30," Rocco Mossuto, Creator of the Crestwood Collegiate League, said.
He adds, "We're trying to get you to have your weekends. Like I said that it's important to me, and it's important to me that guys have an affordable place to play baseball. We keep it cheap, we keep it close, our footprint is small. And I saw kind of a need. There was a hole for guys. Some of these leagues, if you're D1, we'll pick you up, if you're this we'll pick you up. So a lot of small school guys, a lot of guys who just graduated high school. They're learning what college baseball is. That means you go from a seven-inning game to a nine-inning game. We have college umpires, college coaches."
And the players seem to appreciate this opportunity that they otherwise might not have to get ready to play at the college level.
"This is my only option to be honest with you. I got involved out of my senior year of high school. Stuck with it this and I think I'll stick with it following summers to come," Rogus said.
"I liked getting reps against guys that played college or going into college. I didn't pitch a lot in high school so I got a lot of reps going into college, and it helped me a lot," Porter Olson said.
"When those kids come out of high school into this league, I think some of them are humbled. I'm going to play college baseball, this is what I'm going to expect," Southsiders manager Lucas Fritsch said.
The league has expanded from six to 12 teams this season. The players are still all local, playing at six ball parks around the area, including Brother Rice.
"It's awesome what Rocco has done, being able to expand it to a bunch more teams," Jack Hughes said. "We had an all-star break this year, which is cool, playing against another league. Just seeing the growth, the amount of players on teams. Last year there was some games we were hurting for players. This year, there isn't any of that."
And Mossuto hopes there's plenty more of this to come.
"Hopefully, we can stay around. Let's hope. We'd like to get to 16 teams, eight on each side, stay here on the South Side. We're not claiming we're the best college summer league. We're not competing with the Northwoods. We're not competing with the Northern League. We're what we are, and we're just trying to be good at that," he said.
And so far, so good for the Crestwood Collegiate League.
Rocco mentioned having the weekends off. They only play four nights a week, allowing the players to have jobs and a life off the diamond. They play on Sunday for the start of their playoffs.