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Keene SwampBats
Mission
Our year-round mission is to provide a “community wrapped in baseball.”
What do the SwampBats do?
The Keene SwampBats is a summer collegiate baseball team and member of the nationally renowned New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL). We are driven by our goal to be a great community partner and provide affordable family-friendly entertainment to the greater Monadnock Region. On the baseball side, we play a 44-game summer season, hosting 22 games at Keene’s Alumni Field. We recruit 40+ Division I baseball players from top tier institutions who travel across the country to develop their skills and pursue their dreams of playing professional baseball. Over our 26 years, we have sent 35 players to Major League Baseball and hundreds into the minor leagues. We also do a national search to recruit a team of ten exceptionally talented interns who are excited to develop their professional skills each summer. We are extremely proud of this internship program, as our intern alumni have found success working in MLB, ESPN, LPGA, Wall Street, and private industry. While the face of our organization appears to be baseball, we are built in, on, and around our community.
How Keene SwampBats serves our community
We provide services to the community and especially our youth, through programs that encourage literacy, good oral health, exercise, community engagement, and entertainment.
What are some of the programs the SwampBats have created to help support our community?
The Keene SwampBats are much more than a baseball team. We are supported by 40,000+ fans each summer, a dedicated group of 40+ volunteers each game, a tremendous eight person working Board of Directors (some of whom have been with the organization for 26 years), and over 80 generous community partners. We are so proud of the legacy we have created in our community. We’ve created several programs that truly make a difference in the lives of the young people and youth in our community and enhance our community as a whole.
- Reading with Ribby just celebrated its 20th year and is our number one community-based program and a much-anticipated part of our elementary students’ year. Our mascot, Ribby, goes into area elementary schools each Spring to kick off the literacy program. The goal of Reading with Ribby is simple: foster a love for reading from an early age. In 2023, 5600 students from 31 area schools were invited to participate in the six-week reading challenge, where we asked students to read or be read to 18 times for 20 minutes per day. We are able to offer this program free of charge to all students, who discover a newfound love of reading and are awarded a free t-shirt and family game admission pass upon completion.
- Brush and Floss with Ribby is a program we offer in partnership with a local dentist to help children develop good oral health habits during their formative years. We encourage children ages 3-8 to brush and floss daily with a challenge to do so twice a day for two full weeks. Successful participants receive a prize bag, a family admission pass to a game and the life-long gift of good oral health habits.
- Youth Baseball Camps and Red Sox Foundation Clinic: Each summer, we host two weeks of youth baseball camp for boys and girls ages 5-12 where 300 children work with SwampBats players and coaches to develop and hone age-appropriate baseball skills. We offer 50+ scholarships each summer to children that would otherwise not be able to afford to attend. We also partner with the Red Sox Foundation to host a one-day clinic, free to all children ages 5-12. In 2023, nearly 200 kids joined the SwampBats and the Red Sox Foundation for this clinic. Each child gets a free t-shirt, a bat and ball, and a full day of coaching by Red Sox Foundation staff and SwampBats players and coaches.
- Community Engagement: We schedule many visits by SwampBats players over the summer to local businesses, camps, and events. We offer our mascot Ribby year-round to boost any event. Ribby has been spotted at festivals, workplaces, trick-or-treating, parades, and children-focused events like Touch-A-Truck. Ribby is the face of our organization and kids love him!
To learn more about ways you can volunteer to help support the Keene SwampBats, email swampbatsribby@gmail.com or call (603) 357-5464. To make a donation, visit swampbats.com.
