Press release and photos courtesy of Polish Baseball and Softball Association.
Construction of a sports complex which will include a baseball field has started in Katowice. The facility will be used by the thriving Rawa Katowice club, which plays in league competitions and conducts training of young people in several age groups. The news is evidence of a real willingness to include baseball in sporting plans in Poland, as the project is organized by the city of Katowice and involved successful petitioning and civic involvement from Rawa.
Rawa Katowice Baseball Sports Club was born on September 10, 2006, when Michał Glumiński and Krzysztof Małysa registered a team, the first baseball club in Katowice. From the very beginning, the club gathered players not only from the capital of Upper Silesia, but also from neighboring cities. A year later, the inhabitants of Katowice played their first official match, and their opponents were the players of Gepardy Żory.
From the very beginning, BKS Rawa Katowice has been associated with the “Kolejarz” facility at Asnyka Street. The former athletics and football stadium, thanks to the work of players and activists, was adapted to conduct training and baseball games there. The effort put into bringing the pitch to the right conditions for baseball also restoried “Kolejarz” as a sporting center.
In 2012, the city of Katowice bought the area of a facility owned by the state railway company and work began to re-adapt it for sport. From the very beginning, baseball players were very active in persuading the city authorities to build a baseball field in this area. They took an active part in public consultations, collected signatures for a petition regarding the pitch, and also met with representatives of the City Hall many times. They also received support from the Polish Baseball and Softball Association and baseball clubs from all over the country. As a result, a decision was made that the newly built facility, apart from a football pitch with an athletics track surrounding it, will also include a baseball field. Work began in September 2020, and the commissioning is scheduled for mid-2022.
Since its inception, Rawa Katowice has developed more dynamically every year. In 2012, the team took part in the Silesian Baseball League, in which it still participates, though in 2019, it was absorbed by the Baltic Baseball League, the second tier for the sport in Poland. In 2014, “Rawiacy” took part for the first time in a Polish Baseball and Softball Association league, the Premier League, as well as its first appearance in the Polish Cup. So far, the greatest success of the first team is winning the vice-championship of the 1st Baseball League in 2017 and 2018.
In addition to the sports development at the senior level, BKS Rawa Katowice also made a great organizational progress, which made it possible to start youth training in 2014. Presently, children train in three levels: Teeball (children aged 7-9), Youth (children aged 10-11), Cadet (children aged 12-14). Young people from the age of 15 start training in Rawa’s first team. Each age group has a sufficient number of players to play matches, and recruitment for these groups is still ongoing.
The extensive training pyramid has already brought the first successes. In 2020, the players of Rawa Katowice took second place in the Inter-Voivodeship Youth Championships and 5th place in the Polish Junior Championships, which were also the finals of the National Youth Olympics. Among the young players of Rawa, there are also several representatives of the country and many players from the voivodeship teams. It is also worth mentioning that six young players trained from scratch in the Katowice club have already joined the first team of Rawa Katowice.
In the 2021 season, the first team of BKS Rawa Katowice is playing in the 1st League and the Baltic League. The next games to be played by young baseball adepts from Katowice will be the Silesian League competition. Over the winter, the players took part in the indoor version of this competition.
