Seton Hall University School of Law became part of bringing baseball to Kenya this year when it served as a sponsor for a team of Kenyan high school students who won the first-ever baseball tournament held in East Africa. Six teams participated in the tournament, held September 24 at the Kiongawani Secondary School in a remote village two hours south of Nairobi. The tournament was the culmination of a month’s training directed by volunteers from the United States.
Law School Dean Patrick E. Hobbs donated three dozen Seton Hall Law t-shirts to Baseball4Africa, a unique non-profit organization seeking to introduce baseball to a continent that has yet to produce a major league player. The forest-green Seton Hall Law t-shirts served as uniforms for the Enguli Secondary School team from the rural village of Sutan Hamud, Kenya. The team had only been introduced to baseball on two occasions during the month of September but rode to success as the most-winning team.

Baseball4Africa is the brainchild of Jim Tamarack, a former minor league player and retired zoologist who now spends his time spreading the sport abroad. Tamarack has been searching for locations over the past three years while traveling through eastern and southern Africa. Last year, the Kiongawani Secondary School invited Tamarack to return to instruct its students and those of its sister schools in baseball. He had visited that school on two previous occasions to begin the program and over the course of three trips to Kenya hand-carried enough donated baseball equipment and uniforms to outfit six individual high-school teams. Friends, neighbors, family members, sports colleagues, sporting goods stores, and Seton Hall Law have helped with the donations of equipment, uniforms and money.

“Seton Hall Law is the first institution of higher education in North America to provide assistance to these African students who eagerly want to learn the game of baseball,” Tamarack says. The game has been well received by the Kenyan students and their athletic directors, called “games masters,” and principals.
In September, Tamarack and Baseball4Africa volunteers lived at the Kiongawani School for nearly a month and traveled to other nearby schools to introduce baseball to the students. The students, enthusiastic and talented learners, picked up the skills of baseball quickly.

The only private law school in New Jersey, Seton Hall University School of Law was founded in 1951, and is located in the city of Newark. Seton Hall Law School offers both day and evening programs leading to the Juris Doctor (J.D.), Master of Laws (LL.M.) and Master of Science in Jurisprudence (M.S.J.) degrees.

Editors: To obtain a photo of the team from the Kiongawani Secondary School, please contact Kathleen Brunet Eagan at 973-642-8724 or eagankat@shu.edu.