By Nathan Kanter

Turtleford Minor Ball receives grant from Jays Care Foundation

Jul 19, 2017 | 5:00 PM

Given the current state of the Lions Park diamonds, it’s a good thing Turtleford Minor Ball president Blaire Taves decided to apply for the Jays Care Foundation’s Field of Dreams grant.

She almost didn’t.

“To be honest, I put it off as long as I could and my other board member, Ivy [Dusanko], she insisted that I fill it out,” Taves said at Wednesday’s formal presentation of a $62,500 grant to the organization. “This is huge. It means these kids can be prouid of the facilities that they have. They can play competiively. They can play earlier. All the other surrounding communities are on their diamonds weeks earlier than we are.

“And it means somebody cares and that’s really important because this organization needed that.”

Jays Care Foundation receives dozens of applications for its Field of Dreams grant every fall, and quickly turns that into a shortlist. Then, they really start to do their homework, deciding which communities truly need their help.

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Robert Witchel, the executive director of Jays Care Foundation, who was on hand in Turtleford on Wednesday to present the cheque, said the Field of Dreams grant is all about growing the game of baseball from coast to coast.

“We try to support the communities that support us, and being Canada’s only major league team, we don’t just focus our work on Toronto, we work across the country,” he said. “There are a number of things we look for [in applications]: the strength of the community, the volunteer base in the community, the dedication that they have to the game, but also how many kids are going to be impacted. Turtfleford has had a long tradition of baseball but it kind of dipped and I think part of the reason was the quality of the facilities.

“When we saw the number of kids that would have the opportuntiy to play and how it would transform the community, we were really thrilled to help out.”

Staff with Turtleford Minor Ball knew for months they had been chosen, but Wednesday afternoon made it official.

Now, they can get to work on some much needed upgrades.

“We’ve been doing smaller upgrades here and there [but] obviously, we couldn’t fund a shale upgrade for all of our diamonds, that just wasn’t within our power,” Taves said. “The Jays Care Foundation was so good to work with. There was a lot of back and forth. Sometimes with grants, you have that fear that you’re going to fill something out wrong but they would question and visit with you about it.

“I probably said ‘thank you’ about 100 times. I think they were pretty happy to get me off the phone,” she said.

Safety was a big reason members needed the grant.

Wichtel said when Turtleford Minor Ball intially reached out, the issue of safety came up.

“[They] wrote to us and said, ‘Hey, we’re having trouble with our fields. Very poor drainage and it’s impeding the opportunity for kids to play and it’s also not a very safe environment for kids,’” Wichtel said. “[Now], they [can] replace the infields on all three fields and have a much more safe and fun environment for the kids.”

Jays Care Foundation will dole out roughly $2 million total this year to 13 communities across Canada.

“Turtleford is actually in pretty rare company,” Wichtel said. “It’s nice to see the communities that have applied to us and it’s fun to see the volunteers and the facilities. It’s good to come out and say ‘thank you’ to these communities for supporting us.” 

nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @NathanKanter11