B1 Seminoles, one of the largest and most reputable travel baseball programs on Long Island, has merged with East Coast Ghost and will now be ‘B1 Ghost’.
Co-owner, Michael Ferriggi, stated that they were approached towards the end of the fall season by East Coast Ghost with the prospects of expanding their brand to Long Island confident that B1 would be a perfect representative to partner with given their reputation created by their Seminoles organization. East Coast Ghost already had a number of affiliate teams throughout the country, including RCBC Ghost.
“When first contacted, we honestly did not know much besides seeing their teams (RCBC) improve on the regional side and the opportunities presented to their players via social media and it intrigued us. As we are always looking to provide the best for our players, we took a meeting and after over a month of discussions and research getting to know their representatives witnessing how they had the same core values as us, we had the utmost confidence this venture would be in the best interest for our players of all ages.” said Ferriggi.
While this is certainly a big move for the organization, Ferriggi noted that the infrastructure and much of their operations will remain unchanged.
“B1 can still run in the successful manner we have for the past 12 years and this will help us improve our reach, especially in the college recruiting world. We have a good support system in place and this will only help increase our network even more along with creating various different opportunities for players helping them achieve their long-term goals.”
East Coast Ghost has 8 other affiliates across the country including others in the Tri-state area with the North Jersey Ghost (formerly Garden State Ducks), Ghost 845 (formerly Sticks Northeast) and others in Southern NJ and Pennsylvania. This will help expand their reach with one of the better programs on Long Island.
Pat Geroni, founder of PRD/Ghost Baseball had the following to say in a recent interview about how a player can benefit from being in the Ghost Baseball ecosystem:
“Access is rare in the college world. Most clubs only have access to schools and coaches around their core area, but PRD is built to be a recruiting ecosystem. We have on campus events across the calendar year at many schools in each of our regions. Players can opt in to man of those events and gain exposure from D1-2-3 schools they normally would not have access to. The vast majority of our on campus events are private, meaning only open to PRD players. For example, NY players can attend our private showcase event at Duke or other high-end Div-I programs from New England to South Carolina which also have D2, 3 schools from the respective region in attendance. In addition to having relationships with most colleges across the east coast, we also have strong relationships throughout the midwest extending to the west coast. We have a California sector of Ghost widely connected to Cali schools if a player just so happens to be interested.”
There has been a trend of local programs partnering with national brands in order to improve their college connections, rankings and overall brand. This move makes a ton of sense from a marketing and baseball standpoint. As it pertains to Long Island baseball, it is a very smart move for B1 as they evolve as an organization.
