By Andrew Kiser

Photo Courtesy of @CMUMavsBaseball twitter

The CMU men’s baseball team and Challenger Baseball teamed up last weekend to give the players of Challenger Baseball a memory, they will not soon forget.

CMU baseball and Grand Junction Challenger Baseball teams went to the Little League World Series on Aug. 27, and participated in the 2016 Challenger Exhibition Game at Volunteer Stadium in South Williamsport, Penn.

Challenger Baseball is a non-profit division of little league baseball whose purpose is to give mentally challenged and disabled children a chance to participate in baseball. The goal is to teach the children teamwork, leadership and responsibility.

The CMU baseball team was there to assist the challenger team and also to be “buddies” or helpers to the players. According to Grand Junction Challenger Baseball director Carma Brown, CMU was the first university baseball team to be buddies for the challenger players.

“It was great, those CMU boys were phenomenal,” Brown said. “They were the classiest group of young men, they rose up to the occasion far more than my wildest expectation.”

For the CMU players, going to the LLWS with Challenger Baseball was a rewarding experience for the team.

“It was an unforgettable trip for everyone who went,” CMU outfielder Bligh Madris said. “It was truly an honor to go and be a part of something so great. This challenger program has changed my life and I now consider all of the parents and kids family. I look up to those kids as much as they look up to me.”

“[The CMU baseball team] stole the hearts of everybody there, the other team, the other parents and everyone in the crowd,” Brown said. “People came up to us to tell us how amazing it was that there was college athletes being the buddies.”

Grand Junction Challenger Baseball began 17 years ago thanks to Brown and administrator Kelli Hamilton. From the beginning, the baseball team was involved with the program.

“Back in the beginning of challenger, we needed buddies and at that same time coach [Chris] Hanks was in his first year of coaching,” Brown said. “I knew him because he played baseball with my brother. So I asked him to help me and he said, ‘Of course I will help.’”

From that point on, Hanks and the baseball team helped with challenger. And when Brown received the LLWS invitation, she only had the Mavs team in her mind to be the buddies.

“When we got the invitation from the LLWS, I just went to him first, right away,” Brown said. “I said to him if we can pull this off going to LLWS then our buddies have to be CMU baseball players because CMU baseball has been with us since day one.”

Challenger Baseball is played for seven weeks from the middle of April to Memorial Weekend in May. The games are played every Monday in Canyon View Park.