The Bison baseball team returned home from the Dominican Republic with a stronger sense of appreciation for what they have and formed bonds with one another that they believe will carry on into the season.
The team served together on their first all-team mission trip where they renovated a local sandlot field. The guys built dugouts, put up a backstop, leveled the playing surface and spruced up the field. They worked from Dec. 12 to Dec. 19 alongside a pastor named Michel.
When the team wasn’t hard at work they had some free time to kill.
“When we weren’t working, we spent a lot of time playing with the kids in the local community,” senior Josh Lee said.
Senior J Hwang talked about the impact simply spending time with the kids had on him.
“The biggest impact for me was the relationship that I got to build with the community and the teammates that I went with,” Hwang said.
“I spent a lot of time with the kids, just hanging out hours after hours even though I couldn’t speak Spanish.”
Lee said he was most impacted by the lifestyle the people of the community lived, and the joy he saw in their lives.
“The biggest impact the trip had on me was how happy and appreciative the people in the community were, especially the kids,” Lee said.
“They have very little, but you wouldn’t know that because they never stopped smiling while we were there.”
Not only did the trip impact the individual players on the team, but it also helped the team form strong bonds with one another.
“I feel like our team is a lot closer because of the trip,” Lee said.
“We were able to get to know each other at a level that most teams don’t have the opportunity to do.”
Hwang talked about the “other side” of the Bisons.
“I was curious to see a different side of the team since I’m always used to see kind of our ‘crazy’ side, but it was awesome to see our genuine loving side towards the kids and the people of the town,” Hwang said.
“I could even feel the bonds within us getting stronger.”
The time the team spent in the Dominican was beneficial to the community as well as the Bisons. Hwang hopes that the little league team will be able to play on it quickly and one day make it to the Little League World Series.
“It is an experience that no one on the team will forget as long as they live,” Lee said.