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After sitting dormant for a few years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Nansemond River PONY Baseball league has recently begun to pick up steam again. New faces on the leadership team brought about a desire to turn the league back into what it once was. 

Niki Hill joined the league as president in October 2023 and has been another key player in the revival of it. She said her son was playing on a PONY team in Smithfield, and she was curious as to why the league right down the street from her wasn’t active. 

Hill had worked closely with the previous Nansemond River PONY president, Myra McCarthy, when she was president of Bennett’s Creek Little league, so the switch to Nansemond River PONY wasn’t difficult. 

Getting the PONY name out there again after people had forgotten about it was definitely a challenge, Hill said. 

“People just kind of don’t even know you’re there anymore,” she said, “because Bennett’s Creek Little League is a very big league over here. So people just tend to forget that the PONY was even there because it wasn’t offered for so many years.”

She added that even when they had those early registrants, it usually wasn’t enough to make a team so they partnered with other leagues in the area that would take the kids.

When she took over as president, Hill said there were only a couple of thousand dollars in the league’s checking account — which she said was one of the biggest challenges. Hill said it was important to her to keep registration costs low, but they also needed money to fix the fields so they could be used. 

Robbie Rutherford became the league’s baseball commissioner in 2022 and put $30,000 of his own money into addressing many of these issues right away. He said one of the concession stand roofs needed to be replaced, dugouts had to be redone, the fields had to be cleaned up and refurbished, and he wanted to build a batting cage for the younger players. 

This isn’t the first time Rutherford has invested thousands of his own dollars into local baseball teams. He’s also built a batting cage for Bennett’s Creek Little League and has donated to Portsmouth and Churchill little league teams as well. 

“My goal is to give kids a place to be, doesn’t matter where,” Rutherford said. “Work is what it takes to do something like this. I think it’s a great endeavor. It’s just, like I said, my way of giving back to these kids.”

Another fresh face in the league is Mark Cisneros, who started coaching for PONY in the fall of 2024. He’s made big strides by bringing softball to the league, which he said Rutherford and Hill welcomed “with open arms.” The program was up and running by late August and includes ages eight to 16.

Cisneros said he felt compelled to bring competitive softball to the PONY league because he noticed that recreational softball players were struggling to join and play on high school teams.

“It’s a big jump for them to try and make the team, stay with playing softball and continue,” he said. “Then, if they don’t, they kind of fizzle out; they’re not in sports anymore, which isn’t what we want. We want young girls, young men in sports as long as possible, keeping them active.”

Currently, Hill said they have two softball teams and four baseball teams. She’s hoping to eventually get to 10 to 15 baseball teams and 10 softball teams. She said she would also love to see teams practicing every week night with Friday and Saturday night games. Hill said she also has aspirations to go to the PONY world series.  

“I just want to see and hear the kids laughing, cheering, and just the pure excitement of the game,” she said.

While Hill admitted the league still has a long way to go, she said all the “new blood” has been a really good thing. People are putting in the work to recruit players and get the word out there that the league is running again.