Knights ‘step up to the plate’ to raise funds for baseball field for special-needs athletes

Knights from several councils in Michigan join athletes from the Challenger Division of Clinton Valley Little League, which serves people with disabilities, for the June 15, 2024, dedication of McGivney Field, a new accessible baseball diamond at Neil Reid Park in Clinton Township. / Credit: Jonathan Francis

CNA Staff, Aug 31, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

The Knights of Columbus recently raised over $60,000 to build a new baseball field in Michigan for athletes with disabilities. The field will be used by members of the Clinton Valley Little League Challenger Division Senior League, which is for people with special needs over the age of 16.

Forty-two Knights of Columbus councils in the Archdiocese of Detroit helped raise about $65,000 for the field.

McGivney Field, named after the priest who founded the Knights, Blessed Michael McGivney, is a new Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)-compliant, fully accessible baseball field at Neil Reid Park in Clinton Township, Michigan, and has features such as larger dugouts to accommodate wheelchairs and rubberized base paths for improved mobility and safety.

Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Robert J. Fisher was joined by local parish priests for a prayer of dedication and blessing over the field on June 15. The first game held on the field immediately followed.

The local Knights first began working with the special needs league in 2006 when St. Isidore Council 7200 in Macomb, Michigan, offered to sponsor a youth team to alleviate the cost for families.

Since then, the Knights have continued their support of the Challenger Division, raising more than $180,000 for the league. The proceeds have come mostly from councils’ annual fund drives for people with disabilities.

Ken Dumais, a member of St. Mary of the Hills Council 13950 in Rochester Hills, Michigan, oversaw the initiative, which first started in 2019. It was Dumais, who was a part of the St. Isidore Council at the time, who started the relationship between the Knights and the Challenger Division in 2006 and helped raise funds to build their first field. This field is still used by the younger members of the league and is located next to the McGivney Field.

Dumais told CNA in an interview that getting to see that first game held on the field was “validation that the Knights of Columbus really stepped up to that plate and they really hit the ball out of that park on this one.”

He said that watching the members of the league play “you couldn’t tell the difference. They were like any other child or any other baseball player just having fun on a diamond. Getting to play with their friends and have fun.”

A mother of a player of the Challenger Division once shared with Dumais a conversation she had with her daughter. The mother asked her daughter: “Why do you like playing baseball so much?” Her daughter responded: “It makes me feel normal.” 

It’s stories like this that Dumais said gives him, and others involved, “a push” to keep working hard to raise the funds needed to support the league.

Dumais called those with special needs “gifts from God” and because of that “you go that extra mile,” he said, adding: “Knights of Columbus has always given that extra mile to those individuals with special needs. They always have.”

Now having two fields available for players of the Challenger Division, Dumais hopes it will continue to give them the “confidence to play and do the same thing that other kids are doing” and to feel “part of something bigger than yourself.”