Last month Herts Baseball Club announced the creation of a partnership with Legends Baseball Club with a view to entering two teams in the National Baseball League (NBL) – Herts Falcons and Herts Legends – to coincide with the NBL Pilot Project which Herts will be implementing in 2023.
The president of Legends Baseball Club and GB U18 national team manager, Jonathan Rodriguez, was appointed as the manager of the Herts Legends. One of the objectives of the partnership was to provide an opportunity for players from the GB U18 team and other GB age groups to play together in Britain’s top league.
In the last few days it has been confirmed that the Great Britain national team programme has decided to make changes in its coaching staff and a new GB U18 head coach will be appointed in Jonathan Rodriguez’s place.
After careful consideration of how this would affect his role and one of his key objectives of the partnership, Jonathan Rodriguez has had to make the difficult decision to step down as manager of the Herts Legends NBL team.
Herts Baseball Club president, Aspi Dimitrov, said, “On behalf of the entire club, I want to express our gratitude to Jonathan for all his contribution and support over the last twelve months, from the clinics he ran with the Herts youth teams last year to the launch of the NBL Pilot Project. Since we unveiled it last month, the Project has generated the momentum we were aiming for and Jonathan has played a key role in this. His contribution has put the club in a strong position going into the pilot project which has the potential to create a path to making the leap from amateur to semi-professional status.”
With over 40 players expressing interest in the NBL tryouts with Herts, our club is keen to assess whether it would be possible to keep to the original plan of entering two Herts teams in the NBL and is currently considering candidates for manager of the second NBL team. The decision on this is expected to be announced shortly after the 31 January deadline for BBF league entries.