WILKES-BARRE — When spring rolls around, my thoughts immediately go to baseball season.
It’s a time when my Yankees take the field and show how millionaires can’t hit a 95-mile-per-hour fastball. Check out the Bronx Bomb-less lineup, and you will find five or six starters with batting averages under .200.
But then I think about the real baseball players of Victory Sports, where adults with mental and/or physical challenges proudly wear their uniforms and play the game we all love.
An organization that is very near and dear to me, Victory Sports, does what it can for adults with mental and/or physical challenges. When we began in 2011, we had about 40 participants — this year, we expect to have more than 100.
The participants play baseball in the summer, basketball in the winter, and we hold several dances, in addition to other activities like movie nights, yoga classes, and bowling outings. We provide pizza, soda, water, and ice cream at events.
And there is no charge to the participants.
Parents tell us all the time that they have seen a remarkable change in their children — they have become more social, they lose weight, they make friends, they smile, they look forward to going out and participating.
In essence, their quality of life is vastly improved.
Victory Sports is just one small example of the need that is out there. We would like to do more for our participants — and they would enjoy having more to do. And they deserve the opportunity to do more — much more.
But with limited funding, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to plan things like a trip to an amusement park, a baseball game, or a zoo, for example.
Like all of these worthy charities, Victory Sports wants to grow. The problem is, because of the limited amount of funding out there and the competition to secure donations, growth is usually a dream; reality is keeping the status quo. And all too often, having to make cuts happens all too often.
I have a very real attachment to the Victory program, having had two parents with disabilities. So at a very young age, I gained a very real appreciation of the abilities of people with disabilities.
To see the joy on the faces of the Victory participants always makes it all worth it for me. Each participant has a story — each has had to cope with issues most of us will never encounter. And these kids, as I call them, face them with the best possible attitude.
I still tell people about one of our Victory participants all the time. Like the late Reynold Derenfeld, a man who enjoyed playing baseball since the first time he stepped on the Victory diamond.
The first time Reynold played Victory, he was all decked out in his Phillies uniform. He had a good day, as all Victory participants do — never getting out and reaching base every time he got up to bat.
When the game was over, Reynold stopped me and said this:
“This is the first time I ever wore a baseball uniform and played on a real baseball field.”
Reynold was speaking for most of the Victory players.
That’s why we have to speak for them.
And that’s why we all have to do our part — following the lead of organizations like the Luzerne Foundation’s lead — to help where we can.
Last week, 30 local nonprofits presented at the Luzerne Foundation’s annual Nonprofit Forum for the chance of receiving grants ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 — 25 of the presenting organization will receive $5,000 each and five finalists will get $10,000 each for a total of $175,000.
At these forums, one thing is always crystal clear — everybody in the room has one thing in common — they need financial assistance to further their particular mission, and each is very worthy.
The problem is, as generous as the Luzerne Foundation is and always has been, the needed help it provides is just not enough to guarantee not just the implementation of new, challenging, needed programs — it cannot guarantee the perpetuation of the services these organizations provide that are so needed in our community.
The 30 groups that presented their cases are just the tip of the local non-profit iceberg. There are numerous charities out there that have experienced cutbacks in federal and state funding, and with that, the search for new funding sources has become extremely competitive.
All of these organizations provide critical services. Many of them provide programs that go beyond their original mission — so much so, should they be reduced, or even eliminated, the effects on the people they serve would be catastrophic.
Whether the cause benefits children, seniors, the mentally and/or physically challenged, the needy, or disowned cats and dogs, they all deserve support.
The question is: Where does that support come from?
And you can be certain this collective need exists year-round.
The issues these organizations face daily grow increasingly demanding as the weeks and months go by.
And society — all of us who care and can help — must respond every way it can.
That would be a major victory.