Please help the Garden Valley High School baseball team raise funds to build their own baseball field.  Garden Valley High School is a Title I school in a rural town in the mountains of Idaho. Our baseball team was started 2 years ago and consists of almost every high school boy in the school. With no field to practice on, the team has been using the girls' softball field for practice, adjusting to the obvious differences between baseball and softball fields. The baseball team is at the mercy of softball home games and practices. Many times the baseball team has had to practice after the girls, starting practice at 5:30 and staying until 7:30 or 8pm at night. But these boys are dedicated! Many of the team members would get together for informal practice after school, go to required practice, and then continue working on their game until sunset. The baseball team has no place to host games so they have to travel several hours to public fields, often playing difficult doubleheaders. But all these challenges included, these athletes have shown perseverance and dedication, and even made it to the State Championships their first year! 

Some of these players have expressed to their coaches and parents that they are interested in being collegiate baseball athletes. While we as parents and coaches can give them the tools and practice, we simply don't have the facility they deserve. Garden Valley has a community Little League program and middle school baseball program to prepare kids for the high school level, but in order to help these boys progress beyond high school they need a real field to practice on. Currently, the team is partnering with community members and businesses to get materials and labor donated or at cost and your donation would be greatly appreciated! 

Coach Randy Thompson describes their first year: "So proud of our baseball team! We just started our baseball program this year. The kids fought through so much. They were constantly told we couldn't pull this together.  They were told that even if we got a team together, we didn't have enough time to develop a pitching staff. We weren't allowed to play a district schedule and had to scrounge around to schedule games at the convenience of other schools (our opponent today refused to play us in the regular schedule). We didn't have a field at our school to host games. We had to use a portable wooden mound and practice on the girls' field after their practices. Our only chance to make the post season was to win a play-in game 2 days before the district tournament started which would put even more pressure on our pitching staff.  Some of our kids had never even played organized baseball before. Yet, we did it! We won the play-in game and entered the tournament as the 8th seed and won 3 games to advance to state. These kids and our coaches deserve all the accolades coming their way. I am so thankful for the great coaches that worked so tirelessly with these kids.  Go Wolverines!"