12-year-olds warned: No vaccine, no game

Cooperstown Dreams Park, which plays host to week-long baseball tournaments for youth teams from all over the country, announced last week that vaccines for all participants 12 and up will be required.

There’s just one problem: None of the currently available vaccines is authorized for anyone under the age of 16, and only Pfizer’s vaccine is authorized for use in those 16 to 18.

“Cooperstown Dreams Park is hopeful that the vaccines will be available a minimum of twenty-one days prior to any registration date,” stated a press release.

“Cooperstown Dreams Park will if necessary modify registration date by registration date until a vaccine is available for 12-year-olds and older,” the release continued.

Those 11 and younger must provide proof of a negative COVID test. Any family members who wish to visit must also be vaccinated.

Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are all currently testing their

vaccines in children.

Faced with the uncertainty that any vaccine will be authorized for use in under-16s and the difficulty of getting a team’s worth of parents to agree to vaccinate their kids if a vaccine is authorized, teams are canceling their registration in droves.

“The difficulty that a lot of these teams that are canceling, which are a lot of them, have is that you have 12 to 15 families that all have to agree” to vaccinate their children, said Nick Molinari, coach of the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Dirtbags, who canceled their participation in the tournament. “It was almost like it was an impossibility that we could do that.”

Mike Metcalf of the South Tampa Hooks in Florida said he is meeting with parents this week to decide if they will cancel, but that every other team he is aware of has decided to cancel.

Cooperstown Dreams Park said it made the decision to require vaccinations in order to prevent a campwide shutdown and to protect employees, campers and their families.

The loss of tourism has prompted a range of reactions in Cooperstown’s business community, said Tara Burke, executive director of the village’s Chamber of Commerce.

Some business owners are “relieved” from a health and safety perspective, she said. Fewer unvaccinated people pouring into Cooperstown means less risk of a virus spike in the area.

“But, as you can imagine, there were also several businesses that reached out to us really angry and frustrated by that news,” Burke said. The accommodations sector in particular is facing “a wave of cancellations” after a difficult year.

In normal years, Cooperstown Dreams Park welcomes 104 12u teams a week throughout the summer for a tournament experience that Molinari, who took a team in 2019, described as “magical.” Teams live together as they compete in between six and 13 games during the week and take part in skills competitions.

Families often come along, too, and Burke said that “thousands and thousands” flood the streets of Cooperstown during the months the park is operating.

“Cooperstown Dreams Park put people in a terrible situation,” Molinari said. Families had already paid for lodging and airfare, and some of them are struggling to get refunds. Molinari is working with the park to get the team’s registration fees — around $1,200 per child — refunded, too, after the team spent a year fundraising with garage sales, raffles and other strategies.

His team of 12-year-olds will be too old next year, Molinari said, and they’re all disappointed they couldn’t participate. But, he pointed out, last year’s teams didn’t get to participate either.

Cooperstown Dreams Park did not return a call requesting comment.