The Winnipesaukee Muskrats were a

collegiate summer baseball Collegiate summer baseball leagues are amateur baseball leagues in the United States and Canada featuring players who have attended at least one year of college and have at least one year of athletic eligibility remaining. Generally, they operat ...

team in Laconia, New Hampshire, playing in the

New England Collegiate Baseball League The New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) is a 13-team collegiate summer baseball wooden bat league founded in 1993 and sanctioned by the NCAA and Major League Baseball. Each NECBL team plays an eight-week, 44-game schedule during June ...

(NECBL), a wood bat league operating in the northeastern United States. The team's home field was Robbie Mills Field in Laconia. The Muskrats were an

expansion franchise An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also ...

that was formed in 1999 and began play as the

Manchester Silkworms The Manchester Silkworms were a collegiate summer baseball team located in Manchester, Connecticut playing in the New England Collegiate Baseball League, a collegiate summer baseball league operating in the northeastern United States region of New ...

of Manchester, Connecticut, in the 2000 season. The team moved to Laconia for the 2010 season. The NECBL announced in November 2015 that the team would be called the Winnipesaukee Muskrats (named after the region's

Lake Winnipesaukee Lake Winnipesaukee () is the largest lake in the U.S. state of New Hampshire, located in the Lakes Region at the foothills of the White Mountains. It is approximately long (northwest-southeast) and from wide (northeast-southwest), covering & ...

) in 2016. The Muskrats folded following the 2022 season.

History

Manchester Silkworms

The Manchester Silkworms began play in 2000 as the third Connecticut-based NECBL team. The Silkworms' high water mark occurred from

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

when they recorded five consecutive playoff appearances. The team hosted the 2004 NECBL All-Star Game and achieved a franchise best 24-17 record in the same season.

Laconia Muskrats

After the 2009 season, Silkworms owner Ed Slegeski sold the franchise to a team of partners led by Jonathan and Noah Crane. The Muskrats name was selected from a Name-the-Team contest. In February 2012, the Laconia Parks and Recreation Commission approved a plan of the Muskrats to sell alcohol in a pavilion beyond left field at Robbie Mills Field that would be separate from general seating. On April 30, the club announced the construction of a manual scoreboard patterned after the Green Monster at Fenway Park in Boston at the left-field fence. The wall, tall and in length, was built during the 2012 season, and painted green by the end of the season, but the party deck was not finished.

Winnipesaukee Muskrats

After the 2015 season, new General Manager Kristian Svindland changed the name of the team from Laconia to Winnipesaukee, the name of Laconia's "Big Lake", to appeal to the entire region. The Muskrats folded following the 2022 season after the league's governing board rejected the team's strategy to house players.

Postseason appearances

References

External links

Official website

NECBL
{{New Hampshire Sports New England Collegiate Baseball League teams Amateur baseball teams in New Hampshire 2000 establishments in Connecticut Baseball teams established in 2000