It’s a Family Tradition

by Jill Cousins

Just as they are today, Chelsea and Ryan Bono were a baseball-loving young couple more than a decade ago when they began to start a family. If their first child ended up being a baby boy, Ryan knew just how he would raise the young man to love America’s Pastime as much as he did. When Chelsea’s sonogram revealed a baby girl was on the way, Ryan did what all the great switch hitters do and immediately embraced life as a girl dad.

Addison Leann Bono was born in Lake Mary on December 8, 2012, and she was a daddy’s girl from day one. Addi (as everyone calls her) did her father proud by immediately immersing herself in the Bono baseball bonanza.

Playing Ball Is in Her Blood

While still in diapers, Addi would join her parents at her cousin’s baseball games. By age three-and-a-half, she was the only girl on her Longwood Babe Ruth T-ball team. At age five, she made her first baseball All-Star team, and when she began playing softball in the Winter Springs Babe Ruth program, she made the All-Star team every year.

“She’s a beast,” says Chelsea. “She’s just an incredible softball player.”

This past August, while her cousin Landon Bono was helping Lake Mary Little League’s baseball team capture the nation’s attention by winning the Little League World Series, Addi was there in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, too. She wasn’t just there to cheer for her cousin and his teammates, though. Addi also joined Landon as a participant in the prestigious T-Mobile Little League Home Run Derby.

Addi, a sixth-grade student at Greenwood Lakes Middle School, was the only 11-year-old to make it to Williamsport, where she competed against seven 13-year-old girls from around the country. She first won the local Lake Mary Little League competition earlier in the summer, by hitting a whopping 61 home runs in three 90-second rounds. That total qualified her for the East Regional finals in Kansas City, Missouri, where both Addi and Landon finished second to earn a trip to Williamsport (the top four advanced).

In head-to-head competition in Williamsport, Addi did not reach the softball finals. But Landon, who was the youngest baseball participant in last year’s Home Run Derby, won it all this year, and Addi is hoping to follow in his footsteps in 2025.

Ready To Be a Comeback Kid

“What’s nice is I have a chance to come back next year,” says Addi, who turns 12 on December 8. “I really want to accomplish what Landon did and win it all, and I think I can do it if I keep working hard.”

That shouldn’t be a problem, according to her mom.

“From the beginning, she’s just been the kind of person who always wants to put in the work,” says Chelsea. “I have a video of her in a pretty formal dress, diving for balls in our front yard [thrown by her dad]. She was about six years old. But that’s the kind of kid she is. She gets all A’s. And she’s also a great friend, a great teammate, and a great kid. She makes us incredibly proud.”

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as the saying goes. Addi’s dad Ryan and his twin brother Kyle (Landon’s dad) were baseball stars at Lake Mary High School (Class of 2002) and the University of Central Florida. In addition to owning a landscaping company together, the twins also have a baseball facility in Kyle’s backyard where they do private instruction.

The twins’ older brother Mickey Bono was on the Lake Brantley baseball team that reached the 1994 Final Four at the high-school state tournament in his senior year. Their dad, Mike Bono, played college baseball at Murray State University in Kentucky, and he and Mickey started the Central Florida Suns baseball and softball travel team organization. All six of Mike and wife Sheila’s grandchildren have played in the program and were coached by Uncle Mickey. Mike and Sheila’s daughter Kim has three children – Brayden Kintner played baseball at Lake Mary; sister Marissa is a junior softball player for Lake Mary; and Makayla, a seventh grader at Greenwood Lakes, was a softball player who now   plays volleyball.

At Lyman High School, Chelsea was a cheerleader who played softball and soccer, and her brother Chase Rozell played baseball for the Greyhounds. She was raised in Longwood by mom Becky and dad Calvin, who passed away in 2007 but was obsessed with baseball. Chelsea and Ryan, who married in 2008, met at her brother’s surprise birthday party when they were all in college. 

“Baseball was very much prevalent in my life,” says Chelsea. “I am very much in love with baseball and softball, just like everybody in the Bono family. So my kids were destined to be ballplayers, for sure.”

As for the baseball heir to their family’s throne, Chelsea and Ryan welcomed son Austin to the family in 2015. And, yes, he plays baseball, too.