Since 2013, Challenger Baseball — an adaptive program run in partnership with Baseball Canada and Little League Canada where those with physical and/or cognitive disabilities are taught core life skills in a fun and safe environment — has had a home in Nova Scotia.

Randy Crouse, an Antigonish resident, has seen his involvement grow from being a local co-ordinator to a provincial and national co-ordinator with the organization. As his role has grown, so has his desire to see the program expand on what it can offer.

“Every year since we started, we had a provincial jamboree, basically a one-day event for a couple hours, kind of like a little provincials,” said Crouse. “As my role became bigger and I was getting to know what they were doing in New Brunswick and P.E.I., COVID hit. And coming out of that, I began to wonder what was our next step in terms of building our events.

“And with baseball, you have teams that go to national and Eastern Canadian events every year, so that was kind of the basis for what we were hoping to achieve with this. There’s 20 or so Challenger Baseball programs between Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I., so the goal was to get as many of them together as possible for a weekend and try it out, see what works and what doesn’t, and try to build something from there.”

And thus the Atlantic Challenger Baseball All-Star Series was born, with 82 athletes among the 300 people in total who made the trek to The Sandlot field, designed with adaptive learning in mind, in Antigonish for the Aug. 9-11 event.

As with any outdoor event, organizers have to keep an eye on the weather forecast. But Crouse said participants had much more than baseball on their plate as part of the weekend’s activities, and thanks to a partnership with St. Francis Xavier University, the baseball component could’ve been played indoors if the weather didn’t co-operate.

“We did swimming, skating and sledge hockey, and bowling in addition to baseball,” said Crouse. “Having St. F.X. on board was a great fit, since they’re used to holding large events. They have a rink, gyms, meeting areas, a pool, everything you could want, especially if we had to change something on the fly in case the weather turned on us.”

Organizers also included a varied social component, with an opening night meet-and-greet, a banquet and a movie night on Saturday, and a volunteer social and Parasport roundtable discussion on Sunday.

Crouse said participants ranged in age from four to 53, and with the large numbers involved, leaning on activity co-ordinators and athlete buddies to ensure safety was essential.

“There was a real sense of community,” said Crouse. “Everyone was cheering each other on and looking out for each other, and our co-ordinators and buddies had the experience and awareness to make sure everyone stayed safe.”

With the season winding down, Crouse plans to meet with stakeholders to get feedback on what worked and what can be improved up going forward. Given the existing infrastructure, Crouse believes Antigonish would make sense as host for the event on an annual basis.

“This was a first for a lot of people, tackling a full weekend away at a multi-sport event,” said Crouse. “So we’re hoping those who came in will go back to their communities and say they really enjoyed this and will want to be part of it again. We’ve relied on word of mouth a lot in the past and it’s usually worked pretty well, so we’re hoping others can spread the word.

“For sure, there’ll be a lot of questions that will need to be answered if we want to keep growing. What happens if we get to 100 athletes? What happens if we get to 200? What will we need in terms of resources and volunteers to make that work? Does this need to become a year-round thing where we need to have people working on it full-time just because there would be that much to do? That’s all part of the process, but for where we are now, just having done this for the first time, I’m pretty pleased with how things have gone.”