Louisville, KY – Louisville’s premier and largest two travel baseball organizations, Vipers/STING Baseball Inc. and Louisville Legends Baseball Club Inc., today announced that they are merging to create a larger organization with expanded resources and facilities to better serve the region’s elite youth baseball talent. The newly-merged organization will operate as a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation under the legal entity, Louisville Amateur Baseball Club Inc.
This strategic merger will combine the best practices and traditions of both founding organizations bringing together their expertise, resources and passion to provide enhanced opportunities for young athletes. Louisville Baseball Club will offer the most comprehensive program focusing on player development, competitive excellence and character building. Louisville Baseball Club will field approximately 40 teams and serve 450 athletes from the Louisville area and surrounding region, making it the largest travel organization in the state of Kentucky.
Brian Wise, President of Louisville Baseball Club, says “It is my distinct honor and privilege to serve the coaches, players and families of the Louisville Baseball Club. With a family-first mindset guiding every decision, I look forward to the exciting journey ahead as we continue to develop not only skilled athletes but also strong character and lifelong friendships. Together, we will achieve great things both on and off the field!”.
The merger of Vipers/STING Baseball and Louisville Legends Baseball Club will allow for a significant expansion of an existing 10,000 sq. ft. indoor space, located at 13201 Data Vault Dr. in the Middletown area just off Shelbyville Rd., to a total of 22,000 sq. ft. The current facility has 6 retractable batting cages, separate pitching lab and meeting space/viewing areas for teams, players and families. The expansion project adds an additional 12,000 sq. ft., featuring up to 10 retractable cages that can also transition to a large turf, defensive training area. Additionally, the expansion will include a strength and conditioning space with a full weight room and arm care area and technology seen in collegiate pitching labs.
“I am very excited that we will be able to combine our current resources and expand our indoor training space,” said Aaron Beard, Founder of the Vipers and Director of High School for Louisville Baseball Club. “Our facilities, along with new training options available to our teams, will be something we haven’t seen before in Louisville. What excites me the most is the ability to do travel baseball a little differently. We can now wrap our arms around the entire Louisville community to provide a path to a great baseball experience. Jointly, we have the infrastructure to now accomplish this and so much more!”
The merger gives a large bump to the number of available outdoor facilities as well as the combined and newly formed organization will now feature 10 total baseball fields across the community including 2 full size, turf high school fields and 4 youth fields at St. Matthews Community Park, 3 transitional size fields at E.P. Tom Sawyer Park and 1 youth field at STING Field at Cedar Creek Baptist Church in Fern Creek.
“We believe that the expanded indoor and outdoor facilities will further elevate the standard of youth baseball in our community,” said Jayson Brunstetter, Co-Founder of Legends and Vice President of Louisville Baseball Club. “This demonstrates our commitment to investing in the development of young athletes and providing them with all the resources they need to succeed.” Kevin Judd, Co-Founder of Legends and Treasurer of Louisville Baseball Club, adds, “This expansion will allow us to accommodate more players under a bigger umbrella and provide them with state-of-the-art training facilities utilizing the latest
technology for analytics and instruction.”
This latest merger announcement follows a previous 2020 merger of the Vipers and STING organizations. The primary difference is this merger will include a full rebranding to Louisville Baseball Club (LouBSBClub). The new brand was created by taking the traditional primary colors of red, blue and yellow from the existing Legends, Vipers and STING brands.
“What an exciting time for travel baseball players in OUR CITY,” said Aaron Flaker, Founder of the Louisville STING and Vice President of Louisville Baseball Club. “We spent countless hours perfecting the look, feel and style of our collective new brand and wanted it to be super exciting for our families, players and coaches. The idea was to continue to use each brand’s existing colors and use a name that represented who we are and where we are from. We are proud that Louisville is our physical home as well as the birthplace to many iconic brands and imagery. Therefore, using the fleur-de-lis in our logo and new brand was a no brainer. We are actively working on some really unique, colorful and trendy uniform and apparel options for players and families. We look forward to dropping those soon!”
For more information, please contact: