The Baton Rouge Rougarou, a summer collegiate baseball team, has been sold just a year after its inaugural season.
Texas-based Clutch Entertainment Group, which founded the team for the 2019 summer season, sold the team to Ricky VanAsselberg, a Louisiana native who has spent his entire career in baseball.
Uri Geva, founder and co-owner of Clutch Entertainment Group, says it wasn’t the group’s goal to sell the team but VanAsselberg’s persistence coupled with the coronavirus economic landscape led the group to consider his offer. Ultimately, the group thought it would be the best thing to do for the team, he says.
“Our goal is not to sell the team but to ensure the team is in good hands for the vision we outlined to happen, for the team’s success,” Geva says. “It helps when the ownership is physically there every day and we think VanAsselberg and his team will be committed 1000%. We’re excited to see what the foundation of what we built will turn into.”
Geva wouldn’t disclose details about the deal but says the team was sold for “a fair market value considering the world of sports and the pandemic.” Conversations with VanAsselberg began last summer, he says, and they came to terms over the past two weeks.
VanAsselberg was most recently the general manager and field manager of the Acadiana Cane Cutters, the summer collegiate baseball team based outside Lafayette. The opportunity to move to Baton Rouge and buy the team was one he couldn’t pass up, he says.
“When the opportunity came I had to jump at it,” VanAsselberg says, adding that he’s an enthusiastic LSU baseball and football fan. “There’s no place I’d rather be than in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.”
VanAsselberg will serve as the owner, CEO and field manager for the Baton Rouge Rougarou and plans to build on the renovations that have been made recently to Pete Goldsby Field in north Baton Rouge, where the team plays. In the future, he’d like to host coaching classes for young coaches and parents without baseball experience, as well as bring concert and tailgating events to the stadium.
“Baseball is all about entertainment, community and getting the community involved,” VanAsselberg says.
