WE HAVE A NEW NAME!!! On Thursday, August 12, the South Carolina Secretary of State approved changing the name of our ministry from Pride Baseball to Kingsmen Baseball. From here on out, we will be officially known as Kingsmen Baseball.
We have been considering the name change for some time now. Back in 2015 when we had the very first summer college baseball team, we played under the sponsorship of the Piedmont Fellowship of Christian Athletes. We liked the name Piedmont Pride for 2 reasons. Number one, we liked the Pride nickname representing a Pride of lions because Christ was referred to as the Lion of Judah. Number two, we liked how “Piedmont Pride” sounded.
When I left FCA to start our ministry in November of 2016, it made sense to keep the Pride name. We had already played two successful years in the SCBL and had our own brand. So we called the ministry Pride Baseball and our motto was “Proudly Competing for Christ”.
Over the past some have questioned the name “Pride” because Christians are not supposed to be proud but rather humble. Also during the past few years the word Pride took on some new meanings culturally, which caused some confusion about what we stood for and what our mission was.
We started investigating a name change. My three kids have always been very involved in our ministry and have a pretty good pulse on society today. I asked them to help me. We kicked around several possible names. My son Preston suggested the Kingsmen. I liked it and my daughters both liked it. Logan said we needed to change the team colors for Kingsmen from red, white, and blue to black and gold. She said it was more regal. Then Callie went to work on some logos and came up with the ones above as well as a couple of others. I reached out to our Board of Directors and they were unanimous in their approval to change.
So, we are now officially Kingsmen Baseball. It will take a while to get everything changed. I will keep you updated. I have already purchased the domain name for Kingsmen Baseball (I actually bought all three – .com; .org; and .net). We will work on getting the website name changed as soon as possible. We will be able to accept donations made to both Kingsmen Baseball and Pride Baseball indefinitely. We will need to buy new uniforms, and plan to donate the old ones to youth baseball teams in the Dominican Republic. All of these changes will take time and cost money but we believe God will honor our decision and provide the needed funds.
I am excited about this change, and believe it will give us greater opportunities to fulfill our mission statement:
TO USE THE GREAT GAME OF BASEBALL TO HELP YOUNG MEN:
*Grow in their personal relationship with Jesus Christ
*Become the best baseball players they can be
*Develop into men of character and integrity
Thanks for reading, God Bless, and GO KINGSMEN!!!
