TRAVERSE CITY — This past Saturday, the Dream Team faced the West Michigan Miracle League and the Miracle League of Mid-Michigan in Traverse City for its first all-star game. The game was made up entirely of players with disabilities.
For many years, kids with disabilities who wanted to play baseball after Little League were without options.
However, 11 years ago, Dayna Ryan founded the Dream Team of Northern Michigan to help kids with disabilities continue playing.
Now, the Dream Team is connecting teams and players with similar stories.
Ryan started the Dream Team after one of her good friends’ daughters was in a car crash that left her with lifelong injuries. The daughter was a softball player, so Ryan and her friend had the idea to create a league that could accommodate her.
The league itself is a nonprofit organization, so much of the work is reliant on volunteers. Several people in the community have stepped up to help.
Susan Fall was interested in the program because her son has a disability but wants to play baseball. After the first meeting, Fall was ready to contribute.
“I looked at Dayna after we had the meeting. I said, ‘Can I be your secretary?’” Fall said.
Fall became the secretary — and the field manager during games. Her husband, Richard, is the equipment manager, storing all the games’ necessities in his trailer.
In their first year, the program had 23 participants. Now it is almost 90.
The growth came with the community becoming more involved in the league. Ryan said they invited key people to become involved, those who knew the population, and had experience with people with disabilities, education and special ed.
The Dream Team usually plays its games at the Grand Traverse County Civic Center. However, for this game, they were able to host at Turtle Creek Stadium, home to the local minor league team, the Traverse City Pit Spitters. With both Fall and Ryan hosting Pit Spitter players for almost two decades, the collaboration was smooth.
“Putting these two together was a natural,” Ryan said.
Collaborating with the other teams also fit together.
“(We) started contacting them in the winter, and we had a lot of communication back and forth,” Ryan said.
Allison Sides of the Grand Rapids YMCA manages the West Michigan Miracle League Baseball program.
She said that Ryan approached them to see if there was any interest in bringing the kids together to expose them to different areas of the state and to make them aware that others are doing these same things.
“It’s been a really exciting process to bring it together,” Sides said. “We live about 2 1/2 hours away, so being able to have 16 of our athletes make it out here to Traverse City and make the trip, and hearing the excitement leading up to it was really cool.”
The Dream Team secured grant funding to bring these teams to Traverse City, according to Sides. The Miracle League is also a nonprofit, so this funding was crucial for this game.
“We did tell our athletes that they would be responsible for some of their own travel fees because it just kind of is the nature of choosing to participate,” she said.
With several families making the trip up to Traverse City, some made a weekend out of it. Ryan hopes for the all-star game to become an annual event.
“We want to be the host. We want people to come up north,” she said. “But hey, if somebody invited us to go down to Grand Rapids or mid-Michigan or another similar program, we would certainly look at it.”
