Some baseball is better than no baseball, unless you don’t like baseball. But as is the nature of school sports, Wiscasset high school baseball is as much about the school as the sport.

Athletic Director Mandy Lewis and the students who stepped up to the plate did well to make a team this year, where there would have been none. JV has most of the fun of varsity but with eased expectations on  games’ outcomes. It’s about the future more than the now. Players gain what they need to move on to varsity and, in Wiscasset’s case, instead of a year being lost for lack of varsity players, this spring, students, alumni and other fans have the team to follow and cheer, and the school creates the building blocks for a return to varsity.

The Wiscasset School Department is all about building back from challenges, from the loss of Maine Yankee to the expensive divorce from Sheepscot Valley Regional School Unit 12. Now the town partners with the district in small ways and potential new bigger ones on pre-kindergarten and special education. The comeback and the moving on stem from fortitude, resolve and political maturity, traits of a town that has had a number of hey days come and go over the centuries and may be poised for its next one.

Sports are symbols of a town, helping market the schools and bring people together, in the bleachers and on a socio-emotional level. Thank you, to Lewis and the team, and School Committee member Eugene Stover for encouraging Lewis in January to try to keep baseball going this year.

You did it, Wiscasset. JV or otherwise, that’s a win that counts.