The Baseball Circuit

Top Baseball Towns in Rockingham County, NH

Ranked on championships won since 2000 — high school state titles and Little League district, section and state titles counted together, with recent wins weighted more heavily. 10 towns have won something.

Portsmouth leads Rockingham County, NH, scoring 9.73 almost entirely on high school titles, though Londonderry is close behind on 8.06. 10 towns have won something since 2000.

The top ten in Rockingham County, NH are Portsmouth, Londonderry, Exeter, Newmarket, Derry, Rye, Windham, Salem, Hampton and Northwood.

Size is doing a lot of work here. Northwood is in the top ten on a population of 4,702, while Derry has 34,062 to draw on — roughly 7 times as many people. That is why the tables below are also split into population bands: a town should be measured against places its own size before it is measured against a city.

Two towns in the top ten got there by opposite routes. Hampton scores purely on high school championships — 1 of them — with no Little League title counted at all. Rye is the mirror image: 6 youth titles and no high school championship in the window.

Recency matters in this table — a title's weight halves every 12 years, so the standings drift on their own every season. Exeter has won something in the last two seasons, which is why it sits where it does.

One caveat worth reading before you argue with the order. The youth half of this score is Little League only, because Little League is the only organisation that publishes a championship archive — every district, section and state champion back to the 1950s. Cal Ripken and Babe Ruth publish nothing below the World Series. 5 towns in Rockingham County, NH run Cal Ripken or Babe Ruth ball with no Little League program at all, and they score zero youth points here no matter how much they win. Towns that run both lose the Cal Ripken half the same way. If your league has a record we're missing, tell us and we'll add it.

#TownScorePopulationHS titlesLL stateLL districtWon by
1Portsmouth NH
Rockingham County
9.7322,9387Portsmouth High School
2Londonderry NH
Rockingham County
8.0627,1015Londonderry Senior High School
3Exeter NH
Rockingham County
7.9216,2054Exeter High School
4Newmarket NH
Rockingham County
7.489,5284Newmarket Jr.-Sr. High School
5Derry NH
Rockingham County
5.0534,0622Pinkerton Academy
6Rye NH
Rockingham County
3.775,66324Rye NH Little League
7Windham NH
Rockingham County
1.9916,20811Windham High School · Windham Baseball and Softball League (WBSL)
8Salem NH
Rockingham County
0.7931,6731Salem High School
9Hampton NH
Rockingham County
0.7516,4481Winnacunnet High School
10Northwood NH
Rockingham County
0.754,7021Coe-Brown Northwood Academy

By town size

A championship out of a town of 6,000 is a different achievement from the same title in a city of 600,000. Same scoring, ranked against places of the same size.

Under 10,000

  1. 1NewmarketNH7.48 · 10k
  2. 2RyeNH3.77 · 6k
  3. 3NorthwoodNH0.75 · 5k

10,000–25,000

  1. 1PortsmouthNH9.73 · 23k
  2. 2ExeterNH7.92 · 16k
  3. 3WindhamNH1.99 · 16k
  4. 4HamptonNH0.75 · 16k

25,000–75,000

  1. 1LondonderryNH8.06 · 27k
  2. 2DerryNH5.05 · 34k
  3. 3SalemNH0.79 · 32k

How this is scored

Only titles since 2000 count, each one's weight halves every 12 years, private-school titles count for 0.75 of a public one, and a regional school's championship is split between the towns it serves.

Full method, sources and what the rankings can't see →

By county in New Hampshire

Counties with enough towns on the board to rank. Smaller counties are folded into their state list rather than given a page of three rows.