Little League Major (12U) and Senior (15U): The Interligues
This weekend, from Friday, August 23 to Sunday, August 25, the best young players in the 12U and 15U categories from the thirteen French leagues will gather in Pineuilh for the showcase event of the youth baseball season: the Interligues.
The champions of the 2023 edition — the South League in 12U and the Île-de-France League in 15U — will be eager to defend their titles. And in both cases, they are well-equipped to do so. And why not win in both categories this time?
Among the other favorites for the competition, we naturally think of leagues with a large number of young licensed players, such as Nouvelle-Aquitaine or Occitanie.
But the number of licensed players isn’t everything. It’s primarily the quality of long-term work that is rewarded. It’s not enough to have one or two ‘driving clubs’ in your league: you need to set up competitive regional championships, with many matches against serious opponents. It’s not enough to work alone in your corner: it’s the collective and collegial work that is rewarded. The Interligues therefore test the solidity of the leagues and reflect the evolution of the federal offer for young people.
This latter has seen some real successes over the past ten or fifteen years: for example, the 12U and 15U French Baseball Championships, which are now very solidly structured and provide a rewarding goal for the best training clubs and young hopes.
Other events are beginning to take shape but remain fragile: such as the 10U and 18U French Cups.
Elsewhere, the essential work remains to be done: as is the case for youth softball, for example.
The 12U and 15U baseball Interligues are undoubtedly the greatest success of this federal structuring work. The presence at the 2024 edition of a team from each category for each French league – 26 teams in total – is proof of this!
A Bit of History
The Interligues were relaunched in 2015 after several years without competition. Only seven leagues (from the old regions) participated in the 2015 edition. In 2017, for the first edition of the competition after the regional reform, nine leagues participated in 12U and seven in 15U. Today, for the first time in history, all the leagues in Metropolitan France are participating in both categories.
In 2019, the Federation established a partnership with Little League, allowing the winners of the competition to participate in the international competitions organized by Little League. With this evolution, the official name of the competition changed, becoming the ‘Little League Major’ and ‘Little League Senior’.
The date of the competition has also evolved since 2015. Initially held on Easter weekend, then on Ascension Day, since 2021 the Interligues have taken place on the last weekend of the summer holidays. Each date has its advantages and disadvantages. The late August date motivates young people to stay active during the summer and facilitates the resumption of competitions before the school year.
Since 2015, the Interligues have been held seven times in Pineuilh and twice in La Guerche in Brittany – the only two sites deemed suitable for hosting matches on five or six fields in parallel, as this competition requires.
Finally, regarding the record since 2015: Île-de-France has won the 12U competition (Little League Major) four times, and the South and Nouvelle-Aquitaine have each won twice in this category. In 15U (Little League Senior), Île-de-France has won six times and Aquitaine twice.
A Place for Sharing Knowledge: Players, Coaches, Umpires, and Scorers
The Interligues are more than just a sporting competition. Bringing together the actors of youth baseball from all the leagues in one place also allows for sharing, exchanging, and transmitting.
This transmission takes place between players and coaches: with the 12U players from one league cheering on the 15U players, or vice versa. Or young coaches taking their first steps as coaches with their league’s selection.
The sharing of knowledge also takes place within the communities of umpires and scorers. Umpires are supervised, and post-match debriefings are learning moments that help improve the level of officiating and train a new generation of umpires. Young umpires have the opportunity to exchange with more experienced umpires during a multi-day competition. The same goes for scorers, who will attempt the enormous challenge in 2024 of following all the matches with tablet scoring.
Exchanging, transmitting… making this community live that serves our young athletes. That’s also the spirit of Little League!
Balls and Infrastructure
This is a subject that can sometimes be divisive.
But the success of the ‘grand gathering’ of the Interligues is also the success of the Kenko ball: this rubber ball from Japan, which is lighter than a leather ball, which favors ‘small ball’ – the game of the batteries, infield defense, bunt, base running…
The young players participating in the Interligues are the best players in their leagues and are capable of playing with leather balls. Many of them already use this equipment for certain activities (selections for national teams, activities at the Pôle Espoir, certain regional competitions, …)
And every year, some people think it’s a shame that the flagship competition of youth baseball is not played with ‘real baseballs’. This will surely be the case again this weekend in Pineuilh.
But it must be acknowledged that if young players are able to use leather balls, the infrastructure of French baseball is currently not able to host a competition on the scale of the Interligues that uses this equipment.
At present, there is not a single site in France that can host 15U matches in parallel on three fields that are adapted to leather balls – with the distances, nets, and separations between spectators and players that these balls require.
To have a grand gathering of the 12U and 15U selections from all our thirteen leagues, the limitations of our infrastructure therefore impose the Kenko ball as the only viable choice.
The Future
But it is precisely by succeeding in these grand gatherings that we may be able to move the lines.
The success of the last editions of the Interligues has not gone unnoticed, and some local authorities are currently working on infrastructure projects, with a view to hosting this competition in their municipality.
The decision of the Federal Executive Committee to award the 2025 and 2026 editions of the Interligues to Béziers – and the work undertaken in Béziers with this in mind – perhaps represents the beginning of a new phase in the history of the competition.
Instead of being forced to go and play where it is possible, making do with current infrastructure, and adapting the playing equipment accordingly, we may soon be in a logic where the prospect of hosting this competition will push local authorities to make the necessary investments to obtain the hosting of the event.
With the continuation of such a logic of long-term investment, we can hope to see the realization of the necessary infrastructure to play high-level baseball all over France.
What better than a major youth baseball competition to dream of a better future?!
In the meantime, let’s enjoy this 2024 edition of the Interligues and wish good luck to the young hopes of French baseball.
Playball for the 12U category at 9:30 with the matches Centre-Val de Loire vs South; Normandy vs Île-de-France; and Corsica vs Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
Playball for the 15U category at 9:30 with Normandy vs Île-de-France; AURA vs Nouvelle-Aquitaine; and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté vs Occitanie.
The finals for both categories will take place on Sunday at 15:30.
David Ten-Eyck
Photo credits: Benjamin Ibanez
