Author visits book club at Laflin Library

You can take the boy out of Avoca…

First Posted: 8/29/2013 The entertainment industry has always had an eye for talent, and they&#8217;ve just spotted the skills of one area Little League.
Members of the Abington Little League spent last Thursday, Aug. 29, at the Ackerly Complex, staging different parts of a baseball game for an upcoming documentary, which is being produced by WVIA.&#8220;This is a documentary that chronicles and celebrates the history and heritage of Little League baseball,&#8221; said the documentary&#8217;s director Greg Matkosky.Matkosky explained that Little League International wanted to create a documentary to celebrate its 75th anniversary, which is taking place in the summer of 2014.&#8220;It&#8217;s the first time that Little League International has ever authorized a biographical television documentary, and WVIA has been chosen to produce the film,&#8221; said Matkosky. &#8220;It&#8217;s going to be an hour in length, and it&#8217;s going to follow the history of Little League, from its origins to today. It will also explore the contemporary issues that Little League has faced, like girls playing and safety issues. We&#8217;re very excited to be doing it.&#8221;The crew has already filmed scenes for the film in 40 locations throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania and the central Susquehanna Valley, as well as Delaware for the World Series of Softball, and Williamsport for the Little League World Series .Matkosky said they learned from those shoots that, due to the speed of the game, some of the techniques the athletes are displaying can go unnoticed to the viewer. In an effort to fix this, the crew called upon the help of the Abington Little League.&#8220;What we learned when shooting game footage is that the game proceeds very quickly, and you really can&#8217;t see the athletic intensity or the competitive intensity of the kids. So, we&#8217;re staging normal baseball action- running to first, batting, pitching, sliding into home, but we&#8217;re shooting this in slow motion so that we can try and capture technique,&#8221; said Matkosky in regards to the day of shooting at the Ackerly Complex.&#8220;When you see a 7-year-old run down a base at a Little League game&#8230; (and) you slow it down to 300 frames a second, you can see them trying, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re trying to do here is see the effort and see the way kids participate in the game.&#8221;After realizing they needed this element for the film, President, CEO and Executive Producer of WVIA Public Media Tom Curra contacted Abington Little League Board member Phil Medico about possibly using the Ackerly Complex.&#8220;We&#8217;re thrilled to be a part of this,&#8221; said Medico.&#8220;(Curra) came to me and asked if we minded if they did some of the filming at Ackerly, and I said, &#8216;Mind? It would be a great opportunity.&#8221;Medico&#8217;s sentiments were echoed by the Abington Little League Board, who approved the use of the field and provided players to participate for the day.&#8220;This has been a terrific collaboration between WVIA and (the Abington Little League). They&#8217;ve provided the fields, they cast the team. They wanted to make sure they demonstrated the diversity of Little League, so we have girls and boys of different ethnicity and different races that are all part of the Abington League, but also represent Little League in the larger International sense. Really, what they&#8217;re doing is they are being the models for the entire international youth organization,&#8221; said Matkosky.&#8220;They&#8217;re going to have a very prominent, visual role in the documentary.&#8221;The crew started filming in Abington Thursday morning with players ages 8 to 12 and wrapped that night with players ages 13 to 18. There are already plans to shoot in a number of other locations across the country, including Arizona, Texas and Nevada and possibly internationally in Japan, Mexico and the Czech Republic.Matkosky said he is expecting a documentary of this size to have national appeal. While the film&#8217;s distribution plans are currently not finalized, Matkosky said WVIA is pursuing national distribution.&#8220;We&#8217;re confident a documentary about Little League baseball is going to be seen in the country&#8230; so we&#8217;re feeling good about its distribution possibilities,&#8221; said Matkosky.This is something that at least one member of the Abington Little League is very excited about.&#8220;I want all my Yankee people, like Robinson Cano, to see me,&#8221; said Patrick Walsh, 8, Clarks Green.The documentary is scheduled to air in June of 2014.

Abington Little League makes its film debut