“We Were Never Just
Building a Baseball Club“
General Manager Lerma Moore on why a community soup kitchen was written into the Bohol Coconuts blueprint from Day One, what it means to feed the same kids you are training, and the bigger vision she refuses to let go of.
“If you are serious about developing a child as an athlete, you first have to make sure that child is not going to bed hungry.“
The Bohol Coconuts Baseball and Softball Club launches on Bohol Island in June 2026. Alongside its elite baseball and softball academy, the club is opening a community soup kitchen designed to provide affordable daily meals to members and local families.
General Manager Lerma Moore, who grew up in the Philippines and serves on the Cambanac Barangay Council, sat down with us ahead of the launch to explain where this idea came from and where she hopes it leads.
There is a version of this story where the soup kitchen is a footnote. A nice-sounding line buried at the bottom of a services page, the kind of community goodwill gesture that organizations add to make themselves feel complete. Lerma Moore will tell you, plainly and without apology, that was never an option.
When she and her husband, former international baseball coach Merv Moore, began laying out the architecture of the Bohol Coconuts, the kitchen was not an afterthought. It was an anchor. It was part of the foundation before the training philosophy was finalized, before the membership pricing was set, before a single prospect had been evaluated.
In a barangay where many families live close to the edge, Moore understood something that no coaching manual could teach her: you cannot ask a hungry child to dream big.
What follows is a conversation about food, dignity, baseball, and what it actually means to build something for a community rather than simply in one.
From the very beginning, honestly. I did not have to think about it very long. When you grow up in the Philippines, when you serve on a barangay council the way I do, you are never far from the reality that some families in your community are struggling with the most basic things. Food is one of them.
Merv and I talked about what kind of club we wanted to build, and we kept coming back to the same question: who is this actually for? If the answer is that it is for the youth of this barangay, then we have to take the whole child seriously. Not just the part that shows up at practice with a glove.
Because I have seen what food insecurity does to a child’s ability to focus, to perform, to believe in themselves. A kid who did not eat a proper meal is not going to absorb coaching. He is not going to push through a hard practice. She is not going to stand up in a talent show and feel confident. The hunger is louder than everything else.
If we are serious about developing athletes, if we are serious about this mission of producing a Filipino Major League Baseball player, then we are serious about the whole environment that kid has to grow up in. You cannot build elite performance on an empty stomach. That is not philosophy. That is just reality.
“A kid who did not eat a proper meal is not going to absorb coaching. He is not going to push through a hard practice. The hunger is louder than everything else.“— Lerma Moore
The kitchen will be open daily. Members receive discounted meals, and the pricing is designed to be accessible to low-income families. We are not talking about expensive food. We are talking about clean, nutritious, consistent meals that a family can count on.
We will also have a mini food store alongside it, which will sell basic groceries at below-market rates. Together, these two things are meant to reduce the financial pressure on the families whose children we are developing. When a parent knows their child will be fed, that child can stay in the program. And when a child can stay in the program, they have a real chance to grow.
It shapes everything. When you sit on a barangay council, you are not looking at numbers. You are looking at people. You know the names of the families who are struggling. You know which kids have potential that nobody is investing in yet. You see opportunity being wasted because the infrastructure to support it does not exist.
This club is my attempt to build some of that infrastructure. The soup kitchen, the mini store, the activities for youth, the academic contests, the field trips — none of it is decoration. It is all deliberate. Because I know what these families need, and I know what these kids are capable of if someone gives them a real environment to grow in.
It is a direct line. When someone in the United States or anywhere in the world buys a Bohol Coconuts shirt or supports the Friends of Bohol Coconuts program, that money flows back into the programs we run here. The soup kitchen is one of them. The academic contests. The field trips. The activities for youth.
So when an expat supporter in Texas puts on a Coconuts shirt, they are connected to a child in Cambanac getting a proper meal. That is not a marketing story. That is just the truth of how this model works. And I think that is a beautiful thing, that people thousands of miles away can be part of something this specific and this real.
“When an expat supporter in Texas puts on a Coconuts shirt, they are connected to a child in Cambanac getting a proper meal. That is not a marketing story. That is just the truth.”— Lerma Moore
I want it to grow into something the whole community depends on and is proud of. Not just a place where people eat, but a place where people feel seen. A place where a family knows that this club is genuinely in their corner.
Long term, I want it to be a model. If we prove it works here in Cambanac — that you can run a youth sports academy and a community kitchen together, that both things make each other stronger — then maybe other clubs copy it. Maybe the franchise model we are building carries this same philosophy into other parts of the Philippines. A soup kitchen in every Coconuts location. That would mean something.
But honestly? Right now, success looks like one child who came to practice because they knew they would be fed. One parent who let their daughter join the softball program because the financial pressure was a little lighter. That is where it starts. That is what it is for.
I want to say: we built this for you. Not for the kid who already has everything. Not for the family that already has options. We built this for the child who needs a chance. Who has talent that nobody has seen yet. Who needs someone to believe in them before they can believe in themselves.
Come. The door is open. The food is ready. The coaches are here. You do not have to be great yet. You just have to show up. We will build the rest together.
The Bohol Coconuts Baseball and Softball Club launches in June 2026 on Bohol Island in the Philippines. The club will operate an Elite Baseball Academy, an Elite Softball Training program, youth kickball and adult recreational leagues, a community soup kitchen, and a full activities calendar serving youth ages 4 to 18 and adults 19 and older. Youth memberships begin at ₱30 per month.
Lerma Moore serves as General Manager. She can be reached at lerma.moore@bohol-coconuts.com.
