Winning its way to Williamsport, Mercer Island is, no doubt, a baseball talent-rich community. So it may come as some surprise that as recently as five years ago, Mercer Island did not play organized Little League baseball.

As one of the Island’s longest standing community organizations, the Boys & Girls Club of Mercer Island has instead run a PONY youth baseball league for decades. PONY, an acronym for “Protect Our Nation’s Youth,” is one of a number of youth baseball organizations that each have their own rules and regulations on how the children’s game is organized and played.

Blair Rasmussen, Executive Director of the local Boys & Girls Club, said baseball has always been an extremely popular sport on the Island and one of the club’s most beloved programs.

“The question was,” said Rasmussen, “how do you harness volunteers to improve your program while balancing the needs of the club?”

The PONY system, compared to Little League, supports fewer teams nationally, but gradually scales skills and field sizes to the player’s age — theoretically making it easier to transition to the high school level. But some parents were dissatisfied with the level and quality of play in local leagues and said interest tailed off as the players reached their teens. Their children sometimes went instead to leagues with competitive reputations in Bellevue and elsewhere.

Boys & Girls Boardmember Brian Emanuels and his wife, Anne, brought forward a proposal in 2005 to reform Mercer Island youth baseball and bring all the local players back to the Island under the Little League system. According to Emanuels, around 30 percent of the Island’s baseball players were playing off-Island.

“I thought, ‘wait a minute, this is kind of silly, why are [the kids] going to over to Bellevue?’” Emanuels said.

Part of the formula included bringing back one of the community’s most successful coaches — current Mercer Island All-Stars head coach Steve Stenberg. For several years, Stenberg was coaching his team, “MI Power,” over in the Bellevue PONY league and winning title after title with Mercer Island players.

“We need a program that makes parents say, ‘Well, why would I want to leave the Island when I have this right in my backyard?’” said Stenberg.

To answer all three questions, Emanuels and Rasmussen agreed to use the Little League set-up to increase the number of games in season, play in the postseason, support off-season travel teams and boost coach and player training programs. The increase in training required an increase in volunteers, something that the new Little League set-up had in spades.

“It’s been a model of cooperation,” said Rasmussen. “We’ve found a better way to harness the volunteer input.”

Today, Mercer Island youth baseball is a rare hybrid of a large community organization like the Boys & Girls Club and a volunteer board, which customarily runs community Little Leagues solo. The club owns and stores all of their equipment, reserves playing fields and collects dues while the volunteers set policies, select teams, evaluate players and train their volunteer coaching staff. Play starts at the 5-year-old level in T-ball and progresses to include player pitching at the 9- and 10-year-old level through 12. Including the 13- and 14-year-old Juniors level, about 600 Mercer Island youth participate in the league’s baseball system and 180 players take part in the league’s softball teams. The number of players varies from year to year, but has not seen a significant change.

Much of the success is down to the increased focus on developing baseball skills and coaching. Emanuels said the “micro-clinic” approach of increasing repetition and playing two games a week improved their play performances.

“Some people feel it’s more competitive,” said Emanuels. “In the past it was more about pure fun, get the kids out to play and not really worry about getting better. Now you can have both.”

When the Little League got off the ground back then, 10 percent of the league’s 9-year-olds had well-developed skills. Emanuels estimates that 90 percent of players now have well-developed baseball skills, thanks to the league’s new focus.

“We’re a pretty darn good program here,” he said. “The turnaround has been remarkable.”

Four years later, the Islanders were flying high. Literally. They found themselves rushed out last week on a transcontinental flight to reach the Little League World Series. They were seated next to West Region champs from Chula Vista, Calif., on their Continental Airlines flight to Newark, N.J. — a team they befriended at the Northwest Regional which both played simultaneously in San Bernardino, Calif. Sitting in seats outfitted with personal TVs, they were surprised to find they could simultaneously scout the team who would be their opening game opponents, South Shore Little League of Staten Island, N.Y., playing live on ESPN in their Mid-Atlantic Region title game.

“We allowed every player to buy the pass to watch TV,” said Stenberg. “Every kid had the Staten Island game on, watching.”

Since beginning their All-Star run, the Mercer Island coach said the support from home has been fabulous. Daily interviews from all the major Puget Sound networks and newspapers and constant messages in the form of e-mails, texts and words of encouragement were all welcomed.

At Williamsport the following day, ESPN producers and reporters interviewed the kids and the team later headed down for distribution of its “Northwest”-emblazoned World Series uniforms to be worn only for the games and returned at the end of their run. But what generated the real excitement was a complimentary pair of bats, a new set of cleats and batting gloves for each player, courtesy of the event’s sponsors, Easton and Wilson.

The team was later hiked up on a float and paraded through downtown Williamsport. The players also enjoyed the Little League’s International Grove, a type of athletes’ village reserved only for players and their coach/chaperones. While the lodging grounds are handsomely landscaped with a “grove” of trees, coach Stenberg said most kids don’t pay much attention to that. They have a recreation center complete with a swimming pool, board and video games, ping-pong tables and more, all in one space. Wii Baseball is reportedly the boys’ favorite pastime of choice there.

“It’s a great way for kids to interact, and get to know each other,” said Stenberg.