FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THE WORLD BASEBALL ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES LAUNCH

DALLAS, TX (JANUARY 21, 2008) - A new and unique youth baseball sanctioning body, the World Baseball Association (WBA), announced it launch today and the start of play for 2008. The announcement took place at the WBA’s headquarters in Frisco, Texas. The goal of this Texas based organization is to provide more opportunities for kids’ ages 9-14 to participate in post-season baseball tournaments. “The WBA will host Super Regional Tournaments throughout the country. Teams from all geographic regions can participate in the WBA system. We offer three skill divisions for ages 9-12 and two skill divisions for ages 13-14. These divisions allow for everyone, regardless of skill level, to participate and experience the excitement of big tournament play.” said founder John Felts in a statement. WBA founder, John Felts, a longtime youth baseball coach, has created a very unique and patented online-based system never before utilized among youth sports. Combining his passion for the sport, his desire for no team to be left out of tournament play and the power of internet technology, Felts created www.wbabaseball.org , an inter-active website for players, coaches and parents. “Unlike most youth baseball sanctioning bodies, the WBA will not hold qualifying tournaments. All registered teams will qualify through our unique online WBA POINT SYSTEM.“ Felts explained. Upon registration at www.wbabaseball.org, teams will receive points for every game played in their regular, local league as well as any regular season tournaments. After reporting the games to the WBA website, the teams are awarded points. Upon achieving the required number of WBA points, teams are eligible to play in the WBA Super Regional Tournament in their area. From there, successful teams can advance to the WBA World Series. This system is very simple and was

designed for coaches, players and parents to enjoy an inter-active experience while playing the game of baseball. The tournament play is the same, but with the WBA you just arrive to the field differently. Some youth baseball sanctions hold a myriad of qualifying tournaments, which allow teams to qualify if they are successful enough that weekend. If not, they must move on to the next qualifying tournament. While some teams are successful, others can be “left out”. Even still, other teams cannot travel to qualifying tournaments week after week. Realizing that thousands of players, coaches and teams are left out by this method, the WBA was created to resolve this issue. For teams that come from “drafted” leagues, the WBA will offer the All-Star division for ages 9-12. Local league administrators or an individual can register with the WBA to hold a spot for a team or teams from their league. Often these leagues only send one league “All-Star” team to their sanction tournament. Now, the WBA offers them an opportunity to send additional teams to participate in post-season play. Leagues can send their All-Star team to their “home” sanction as well as sending another team to the WBA Super Regional. Coaches are allowed to classify their own team upon registration. While some skeptics may think this could lead to “sandbagging”, the WBA feels that the vast majority of coaches and team managers are interested in doing what is best for the development of the players on their team. THE WBA has been designed so that teams can belong to the WBA and still participate and belong to other youth baseball sanctions such as AABC, CABA, Little League, Pony Baseball, Super Series or USSSA. The team will only need to choose which sanction they want to compete for a title in. Depending on the timing of the various tournaments, it is at least 50% possible that a team could compete for a national title in the WBA and another sanction. At the end of the day, the overriding goal of the WBA is to get more children playing more baseball games. Find out more about the World Baseball Association at www.wbabaseball.org.

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