Little League International President and CEO Stephen Keener (left) and Senior League Baseball World Series Tournament Director Michael Brooker with the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce Community Service Award.
February 7, 2011
World Series garners accolades from Chamber of Commerce
Little League International President and CEO Stephen Keener (left) and Senior League Baseball World Series Tournament Director Michael Brooker with the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce Community Service Award. |
Each year, the chamber gives the award to a person or organization that helps others directly or enhances the Greater Bangor area’s quality of life. Bangor has been home to the World Series since 2002, drawing more than 1,000 players ages 14 through 16 from around the world, including their friends and families. Since 2007, the championship game has put Bangor in front of a worldwide television audience on ESPN.
World Series Director Michael Brooker accepted the award on behalf of the World Series staff. Little League International President and Chief Executive Officer Stephen Keener attended the banquet as well.
“The Senior League World Series and its organizing committee, and the over 100 volunteers who work the World Series each year, are very pleased to accept the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce Community Service Award,” Brooker said afterward. “When the Senior League World Series was awarded to Bangor Westside Little League back in 2001, we discussed among the committee members that we had three main goals: to give the players, coaches, and fans coming to Bangor the best World Series experience they could have outside of Williamsport, Pa.; to feature Bangor on an international stage; and to give local kids an opportunity to compete at the highest possible level.”
Also commenting after the award ceremony, Keener said: “Bangor has been a fine and worthy host for the Senior League Baseball World Series. For several years, the Bangor region has welcomed Little League’s best 14-16-year-old baseball players to a World Series tournament that has been coordinated by a motivated group of volunteers headed by Mike Brooker.”
The Community Service Award is the World Series’ second. In May 2010, the Bangor Convention and Visitors Bureau recognized the event’s organizers with the bureau’s Eagle Award, given annually to an organization that fosters economic development in the Queen City.
Despite the two awards, Brooker said the World Series won’t let up in striving to improve the series even more.
“We now have to set the bar even higher,” he said. “We are humbled and pleased by the chamber’s award and will strive to continue making the Senior League World Series in Bangor the unique and great event and focal point of Bangor’s summer that it has become.”
The Jan. 19 awards banquet, held at the Bangor Auditorium, was the largest ever for the chamber of commerce, as an estimated 1,000 diners turned out to celebrate the chamber’s 100th anniversary.