By Kim J. Harmon

 

Seeing a void and filling it – that’s the essence of Pete Blomberg and all the years he has spent in youth softball.

That’s pretty much how he became a coach, how he became a board member, how he became a vice president and – finally – how he became president of Newtown Youth Softball (which is, of course, now affiliated with Babe Ruth).

With more than 10 years of all that (the program just about doubling in size, becoming much more structured, and featuring some of the most dominant travel teams in the state) is why Pete Blomberg has been named to the Newtown Sports Hall of Fame.

Ground Up

Pete, now 51, is a Newtown guy.

He graduated from Newtown High School back in 1969 and soon embarked on his remodeling business. And about 15 years later his daughters (four of them, all told) began to arrive.

It was Lindsay and Lauren, the oldest, who got their dad involved in youth softball.

“When the two oldest were in third grade,” remembered Pete, “I brought them in to play and right away they wanted to know if I could so. I said, ‘yeah,’ and was appointed head coach in the Midget division.”

Pete knew softball (he played eight years of local slo-pitch), but he was starting from scratch. The players in the Midget division were, in essence, getting their first introduction to the sport of softball.

“The kids knew nothing about the sport,” Pete said. “It was teaching them right from the ground up how to play.”

When the end of the season picnics came around, the league was looking for board members (a perpetual search, it seems) and, naturally, Pete volunteered (“with the number of people they had, they just couldn’t do it all,” he said).

He was named Division Director, a job that entailed a few phone calls here and there. After one or two years doing that (these things have faded a bit in memory), Pete took the next step and became vice president.

“There was a little more responsibility,” he said. “At the time, we were looking to affiliate with Babe Ruth or Pony League just to bring in some more structure. The league was growing and there were kids who wanted to play more.”

He served as vice-president for two years.

And then –

“An emergency meeting was called,” Pete recalled, “and the president (Frank Bonacci) resigned – effective immediately. The rest of went outside and wondered what to do and I volunteered to take the position.”

For the next five years (he stepped down in 2002), Pete made it a mission to make the league better – as in more structure, professional instruction, better uniforms, better equipment, better fields and more opportunities to play.

“If we teach the kids the basics from a young age,” he said, “they can improve even more as they grow older.”

Which is one of the reasons why the in-town divisions have become so competitive and why the travel teams have garnered such a fine reputation for themselves (some state titles and trips to the New England Regionals helped a lot, too).

With his oldest daughters heading to college (Lindsay to the University of Connecticut and Lauren to the University of South Florida), Pete saw his run in youth softball coming to an end and at the end of the 2002 season he stepped aside for Cosmo Alberico.

“I had a great time raising my kids playing softball,” said Pete, whose daughters Sara and Jillian are Newtown High School students (senior and junior, respectively). “It was a thing we did as a family and we really enjoyed it.”

Pete remains a Newtown guy, though. In his free time, now, he is a volunteer fireman with the Botsford Fire Department. Since January (after passing the Firefighter I course), he has been on a number of calls – some minor, some not so minor.

“I really enjoy it,” he said, “and I enjoy the guys down there.”

It seems as if Pete lives by the same philosophy he tried to impart upon the many players under his tutelage (be it softball or basketball):

Give it the best you got … and have fun.