Advertisement The original nine players of the league joined Hall of Famer slugger Harmon Killebrew, who played with the Minnesota Twins, and Damian Miller of West Salem, who played with the Milwaukee Brewers and Arizona Diamondbacks, at the YMCA in Onalaska Monday morning to announce plans and funding for the new Miracle League baseball field.
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Baseball Hall of Fame slugger Harmon Killebrew poses with Danny Alderman after a press conference at the Onalaska YMCA.
Photo by Jo Anne Killeen |
Kevin Thorson, founder of the Miracle League of Minnesota, presented a $30,000 check to YMCA Executive Director Bill Soper at the press conference.
“Projects like this don’t just happen,” Soper said. He said the $420,000 project is now halfway funded through support from the Kwik Trip Harmon Killebrew Golf Classic, Miracle League of Minnesota, the Twins Community Fund, Dave and Barb Skogen, CenturyTel, the Russell and Vera Smith Trust, the Corrine Zielke Baseball Fund of the La Crosse Community Foundation, Wieser Brothers General Contractors, Architectural Design, Davy Engineering and the La Crosse Kiwanis Club.
“Everyone should have a chance to play baseball,” said Killebrew, who founded the foundation in 1998 with his wife, Nita. Their foundation recently joined with the Miracle League to help build, reconfigure and maintain baseball fields for special-needs children.
Onalaska will have one of nine such fields in the country. Holmen resident Keith LeClaire, wheelchair bound since an accident when he was 17, had the chance to play on the first Miracle League field built in Atlanta, Ga.
“There’s going to be a lot of smiles,” LeClaire said. He said it is important to “get people out and active. It’s an important part of the whole person.”
LeClaire and Miller are members of a local committee trying to help more than 2,000 area children between the ages of 5 and 18 with special needs to become more active.
Organized by Martha Tymeson and coached by Mary Lin Wershofen of Holmen, principal at Southern Bluffs Elementary in La Crosse, nine of those special players comprised the first special needs league in the region. There are three teams in the league, administered by the YMCA.
The special fields are custom designed with a flat, cushioned rubberized surface to help prevent injuries and make it barrier free to wheelchair users or visually impaired players. The fields also have wheelchair-accessible dugouts.
According to Shelly Wetzel of the La Crosse YMCA, the field will be open seven months of the year for players of all ages and abilities. The complex will also include restrooms, concessions and bleachers.
“Our dream is becoming reality,” Wetzel said.
There are three completed fields and three under construction in Minnesota, In addition to the Onalaska location, a new field is being built in Sioux Falls, S.D., and a new field is planned for St. Cloud, Minn.
“The goal is to help kids through baseball,” Killebrew said.
