Anna’s Kindness surprises Rapid City girls during opening ceremonies

Anna’s Kindness will be rooting for a special group of young Rapid City softball players this year.

Let us tell you why.

In Anna’s first year of Rapid City softball, she was placed on a team with a group of other miscellaneous girls. Each year, the league would create teams for girls like Anna who otherwise did not have a team.

In some cases, these created teams did not have a coach. So the league would call parents on the newly created team, and hope that one of the parents would say ‘yes’ to coaching.

Anna’s dad, Michael, wound up getting that call. And even though coaching girls softball was probably the furthest thing from his mind, he was worried that Anna wouldn’t get to play if no one volunteered. So he said ‘yes’ and agreed to coach Anna’s U10 team, which wound up being called the Starburst.

The league provides basic t-shirts to these created teams, while most of the other established teams had very cool custom jerseys. Anna and her Starburst teammates received yellow basic t-shirts. And each time the Starburst would play a team with those cool jerseys, you knew Anna and her teammates were a little jealous of those custom jerseys.

On Friday night, Anna’s Kindness had a special surprise for one U10 girls softball team. Kraze is a newly created U10 team of miscellaneous girls, just like the Starburst. Its team had no coach until Marlin Davey, who received the same call as Michael, agreed to coach the girls along with his wife Bonny. The girls received the league’s basic t-shirts for their season.

But during opening ceremonies, the Kraze girls and their coaches were called to home plate. In front of the huge crowd that was gathered for the ceremonies, the girls were informed that Anna’s Kindness would be providing them custom jerseys for the season. We handed them out to the girls at a pizza party following the ceremonies. As you can probably imagine, they were beyond thrilled.

“We are getting ‘real’ jerseys,” Madison Davey told her parents.

“I can’t believe we got picked,” said ballplayer Amy Agate.

This special softball team will no doubt be a model of great sportsmanship on the field, and we look to these young girls to spread that same kindness to others off the field. We also hope to coordinate a volunteer service project for the players during the season, so they can help the less fortunate and spread Anna’s spirit of compassion and service to others.

With the league’s approval, we will sponsor a different U10 team each year, one with the same story as the Starburst, so that we can spread Anna’s spirit to as many young ballplayers as possible.

It was a wonderful, rewarding Friday night. Good luck this season girls.

A very special thank you to Aaron, Sam and the Rapid City softball board for allowing Anna’s Kindness to be involved this year. And thank you to Amanda and the west side Marco’s Pizza for hosting the Anna’s Kindness softball team party Friday evening. Please ‘like’ Anna’s Kindness on Facebook, and follow on Twitter and Instagram.

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