On November 4th, the shoreline baseball community was struck with crushing news as the Shoreline Breakers announced they would be cancelling all 14u through 19u age groups. The decision came at the hands of Ed Merola and Trevor Brown, founders of the Shoreline Breakers, The Morgan School baseball coach and In-School Suspension teacher due to low numbers throughout the age groups.
“I felt concentrating on the 8u through 13u age groups and giving them the best experience possible and developing them was the best decision for the program,” said Brown. “I just felt it was the best decision on all aspects. I didn’t want to put together a team that would be below average and would struggle to be competitive. I thought that was the best decision.”
The Shoreline Breakers was founded in 2017 after Brown and Merola started a travel team in the years prior called the Shoreline Baseball Club in order to give kids on the shoreline a chance to play baseball outside Little League. Before then, there really wasn’t a prominent baseball program on the shoreline. Brown had been a college baseball coach for many years prior to starting the program.
In its eight years as a program, multiple towns on the shoreline have seen numerous success in baseball such as Morgan who has been consistently in the Shoreline and State playoffs, Guilford who has been in two state championships in the last eight years, East Lyme who’s seen themselves inside the GameTime CT Top 10, Madison who won a state championship in 2021 and Haddam-Killingworth who won one in 2023.
“We’ve had multiple players play from Madison, and they’ve had a ton of success, and the same thing with Guilford. We had a bunch of players from Guilford and both high school programs have gone into deep runs, into the state tournament. So I think there’s no doubt that we help the process of building it,” said Brown.
Multiple students at Morgan have played for the program in the past and are being directly impacted by the cancellation. Since Thursday, junior Gavin Clow has dealt with the hardship to find a new team. Gavin had played on the Breakers since he was 8 years old and now has to search for a program that has a spot for him.
“I’m currently trying to figure out which summer program I want to play in. I haven’t decided that yet. All the kids that I played with are kids that I have known since I was younger, so it’s gonna be new this year,” said Clow. “Having to go to a team where I don’t know everybody and have to learn things about other people, I have to meet new people. You know? It’s gonna be fun, but it’s also gonna be a challenge at the same time.”
When Clow first found out the news, he was struck with a roller coaster of emotions. The program he had spent his entire baseball career with would no longer have a team for his age group. He expressed his bittersweet emotions, as it’s the end of one chapter and the beginning of a new one.
“Having it shut down is just something that’s like, It’s bittersweet, you know? Because you gotta be happy that we were able to have that experience, but also, you know, knowing that we won’t be able to have it again,” said Clow.
The Breakers have already set multiple plans into place to rebuild the program and to get it where it once was. Making the price cheaper was one of the big things. Lowering the price makes playing for the program more accessible and gives a lot of opportunities to families who can’t afford higher pricing. The current price is 1,200-1,500 per player, which is fairly low compared to other teams around the state.
“Travel sports is very intense at the moment right now, throughout the regions, throughout the country, and it’s expensive and time-consuming. So we try to keep our costs down as much as possible,” said Brown.
According to Brown, the Breakers will now also have more time to practice and develop younger age groups, considering there won’t be any older age groups to practice with.
“We’ll have more practice time in the winter because we won’t have as many teams. And I think that will be a huge asset to those younger kids to continue to work on the fundamentals and the basic, basic drills of young ballplayers.”
As the Shoreline Breakers begin the process of rebuilding their once profound shoreline baseball program, they commit themselves to the mission to stay loyal and develop all players as best as they possibly can.
“We’re loyal to everybody and our main goal is to get them ready to take that next step. So from a winter workout aspect, getting middle school guys ready to make the jump to JV, JV guys getting ready to jump to Varsity, or Varsity guys getting ready to jump to college if that’s what they want,” said Brown.
