The village of Holdfast, Saskatchewan was one of 14 communities chosen by the Toronto Blue Jays’ Jays Cares Foundation to receive funding for baseball diamond upgrades in 2024.
Holdfast has two fully furbished diamonds, and has started construction on a third, which is where the donation from the Blue Jays will help Holdfast Baseball with some upgrades.
“The donation will go towards putting tin on the dugouts and a safety railing cap on the fence,” said Holdfast Baseball President Lora Bast.
Bast said that when she was a kid the ball diamonds were always full, and after going through many years of no baseball at all in Holdfast, it’s started to build up again.
The fields in Holdfast now see teams from many surrounding areas, such as Dilke, Craik and Imperial using the space.
And the fact that the community has been recognized by the Blue Jays is exciting to Bast.
“It’s definitely a fun and exciting thing to our see our name go up on the Blue Jays release. I mentioned it to them in one of the parts of my application that when you’re from such a small community, and our families are all from small communities, and you have the same people who are always donating to make things happen, it can be struggle,” Bast said.
Bast also mentioned that some other organizations helped to get the ball rolling on the construction of the new diamond in 2023: that includes Richardson Pioneer in Imperial, Saskatchewan, as well as a Community Gardener Trust Fund, formerly known as Bigfoot Construction.
The newly renovated field will be known as Bigfoot Diamond.
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