There were a lot of yellow Southeast Regional jerseys and hats worn by fans in the stands of Lamade Stadium in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, during the Little League World Series. But the Virginia team’s merch was hard to come by inside souvenir stands.
Finding a hat or shirt to buy was hard unless you wore a really small size.
“Any time that we have a team that’s within a pretty nice driving distance here to Williamsport, like the team from Loudoun County is, that merchandise does typically try to go out a little bit faster than some of the other stuff,” said Brian McClintock, a spokesman for Little League International. “The support from that area has been great.”
By the time Loudoun South’s squad exited the tournament, there wasn’t much merchandise for their team left.
Part of the reason for that is the merchandise gets stocked well before it is known who will be playing in the tournament.
“We don’t know who’s going to get here until really five days before we start playing here,” said McClintock. So, they try to stock up on merch based on how well each region’s gear sold in the past.
Gear for teams from mid-Atlantic and New England regions always sell fast. But since the Southeast region has typically been won by teams from places like Tennessee and Georgia, McClintock says that “might have driven some of that inventory down a bit because of that.”
“We haven’t had a team from Virginia in a number of years and having that excitement certainly will have people get behind their team even more so,” said McClintock.
“It just varies from year to year which teams they get behind,” he added. “In 2012, we had a team from Uganda here. That was unique. It was the first time we had a team from Africa here and the merchandise from that team kind of went like hotcakes that year.”
WTOP’s John Domen reported from Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
