Ridgway High School’s 1997 baseball jerseys are having a comeback season this spring. The school’s new, pilot junior varsity baseball team is sporting them after a surprise discovery.
The vintage uniforms were unearthed by accident amid ongoing conversations about reviving a baseball program at the school.
Ridgway Athletic and Activities Director Shawnn Row invited TJ Burr, the team’s volunteer coach, to go through an old storage closet the school was clearing out while building the Cimarron Athletic Field last year.
Burr found the jerseys buried among other old baseball equipment and junk, almost as good as new. The 30-year-old uniforms were designed by someone working for Major League Baseball, whom the team’s former coach, Randy Siebert, knew.
“I mean, they’re incredible,” Burr said.
The startup JV team is the culmination of years of work from dedicated parents, who pitched in to create a co-ed Little League program in 2016 to fill a gap in the county’s youth sports scene.
Ouray County Baseball officially became a nonprofit organization in 2020. It has grown to include about 80 players, aged 4 to 14, on seven teams. The nonprofit has also built up the field at the Ridgway Athletic Park and is helping reconstruct the field near Ridgway Elementary School, with an estimated $27,000 in materials paid for by the Ridgway School District.
Ouray County Baseball started pushing to create a formal JV team with the Ridgway district a few years ago, when players started outgrowing opportunities to stick with the sport. Eleven players aged out of the program in 2024.
“Once they reached that 15-year-old range, it got really real,” Burr said.
In January, Ouray County Baseball submitted a proposal to the Ridgway School District to form a pilot JV team this spring. The program has minor start-up costs, for now. Burr and his assistant coaches are all volunteering. Players paid $50 in dues and scrounged up jerseys and equipment from that old storage closet.
Ridgway School District Superintendent Susan Lacy said the program will need to be re-evaluated after the season. Considering school funding is contracting across the state, most districts, including Ridgway, are looking to cut programs, rather than expand, Lacy said.
It’s unclear exactly when and why Ridgway’s original team dissolved at least a few decades ago, but Burr and Row believe it was likely due to a shortage of players — the usual downfall of small-town high school sports teams.
Burr said the new team, open to ninth graders and older, will likely face the same challenge. Right now, the team includes four players from Ridgway Secondary School, four players from Ouray School and five players from Telluride High School.
Most of the team members have been playing together for years, since Ouray County Baseball is a countywide program. Row said the multischool team is a great way for students to meet more peers.
Aside from keeping a full roster, another challenge the team faces is securing a regulation-sized field. Ouray County Baseball is still working toward a fundraising goal of $3.2 million to construct two new fields — one of which would be built to regulation — at the Ridgway Athletic Park. The fields are included in the town’s master plan for developing the park, but the town does not have funds budgeted for the baseball fields. Without that field, the team can’t host any home games.
But for now, the team is scheduling as many away games as possible against other JV programs in the area, Row said. Roughly four weeks into the season, the team played its first game against Cedaredge High School on March 25, which it lost. The team is scheduled to play Nucla on April 22, followed by games with Ignacio and Dolores.
Burr said spirits are high as the players refine their understanding of both the athleticism and strategy of the game.
“I think they’re learning that and starting to understand some of the nuances of the game by playing it more,” Burr said.
