For many children in the Meridian Youth Baseball Association, baseball will have to wait at least a year.

MYBA President Larry Gill confirmed Thursday afternoon the league’s board of directors voted to cancel the season for its ages 9-10 and 11-12 leagues. This comes on the heels of the Babe Ruth League, with which MYBA is affiliated, posting an announcement on its website Thursday that the Regional and World Series had been canceled until at least September due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

League play for ages 9-10 usually begins in March, and the 11-12 league typically starts in April. While the ages 7-8 coach pitch league could possibly still happen — it isn’t scheduled to begin until after July 4 — practices and games for the older leagues had been suspended since March, and Gill said too much time had passed for them to realistically have a season.

“We waited as long as we could,” Gill explained. “The parents couldn’t sit in the bleachers, they would have had to watch practice from their cars, and the players couldn’t huddle. The city issued a lot of rules for our fields if we practiced, and it would have taken several days to even get to a point where we had a game plan to where 17 teams could be practicing with those restrictions.”

Refunds will be issued for the 12-year-olds who signed up for MYBA, while the ages 9-11 players will receive credits for next year’s season. Postponing the season for the 9- to 12-year-olds into the summer wasn’t an option even before the Babe Ruth League made its announcement.

“Our parents had other obligations they had planned that would have interfered like vacations,” Gill said. “This was supposed to be a spring league and not a summer league. Hopefully, we’ll be able to play sometime next year.”

While he understands the need, Gill admitted it’s not fun having to tell children that they won’t be able to play baseball this year.

“It hurts, I’m not going to lie,” Gill said. “This is the first time we’ve had to do this since I’ve been involved in Meridian Youth Baseball. It’s something unforeseen that we can’t control. The health of our 200-plus players and parents that we serve is more important than baseball at this point.”

Registration for the 7- to 8-year-old coach pitch league will begin in June, and Gill said he hopes conditions will be safer by July that its season won’t have to be canceled as well. The fact that teams are allowed to practice with restrictions gives him some optimism.

“We have about an eight-week window to practice and register, so hopefully between now and July 4 the governor will pass something that will allow games to be played,” Gill said.