Date
23 August 2016
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Field of Dreams: Dave Imms photographs the Little League baseball players of Hawaii

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Date
23 August 2016

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British photographer Dave Imms found himself at a loose end waiting for equipment to arrive when on a shoot in Hawaii. He was struck, when travelling around the volcanic island 4000 miles from the US mainland, by how many baseball fields he encountered. “After a bit of research I found that it was the baseball pitch in Keihei where everything goes down,” says Dave. “Fortunately, on one of my days off there was a little league game happening. I just went down with my camera, spoke to some of the coaches and they let me shoot.”

The resulting series of photos present an innocent look at youth sport. The portraits show quiet determination etched on the children’s faces; while the wider shots have a cinematic quality, with the parents and spectators caught in the golden light of the evening, and the shabby infrastructure of the recreation ground contrasting with the pomp of the players uniforms. “It was a quite a big game for them, so they said I could shoot as long as I stayed out of the way," says Dave.

To the surprise of the photographer, the young sportsmen were decked out in official team kits of the LA Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants – but not all was what it seemed. “What surprised and confused me was they don’t have their own teams. I was talking to some the kids and I was saying ‘Oh, you play for the Dodgers’, and asked if they were franchised or associated with the official team,” explains Dave. “It turns out that the coaches have their favourite team and get all the kit accordingly. The kids vicariously represent the coaches favourite team – but on Hawaii. So the game was San Francisco vs LA, but played by 8-10 year olds. Which I thought was quite sweet.”

The event also dispelled a preconception that Dave held about Hawaii. “It was a regional final and one of the teams was chasing promotion. Although there is an impression of Hawaii of having a relaxed surfer dude ‘shaka’ mentality – here was this unnecessarily self-generated stress during this game. The kids were really competitive,” says Dave. “I had my idea of what the competitive nature of mainland America is validated somewhere I really didn’t expect to find it.” The images show a naïve and determined set of sporting hopefuls, caught between the intensity of competition and the innocence of youth.

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Owen Pritchard

Owen joined It’s Nice That as Editor in November of 2015 leading and overseeing all editorial content across online, print and the events programme, before leaving in early 2018.

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