Four years ago, the Aliso Niguel Wolverine Baseball team put forth an effort to give back to the local community of Aliso Viejo’s Little League program, with a program called the “Challengers Division”.
The Challengers Division helps youth with special needs participate and have fun in the sport that they love, specifically baseball. The inclusivity makes it enjoyable for families who have kids with special needs as well.
The now-seniors of the Aliso Niguel Baseball team initiated this tradition, starting the first year of the program as freshman during the 2021-2022 baseball season. Now, Every year the freshman baseball team helps out every Friday with the exception of an away baseball game as a way for them to give back to the community as most of the freshmen grew up playing their earlier years in the Little League circuit at Woodfield Park.
The Challenger division is not unique to the Aliso community, there are lots of leagues that were founded around the country in hopes of promoting awareness for kids with special needs and disabilities. On the official Little League website, the Challenger division is promoted as, “An adaptive baseball program for individuals with physical and intellectual challenges.”
The rules for the baseball game are slightly adjusted in order to accommodate the children with special needs. The games are typically 1-2 innings long, so the kids are all able to get the opportunity to bat. The Aliso Niguel baseball team volunteers as “buddies” which helps the kids get off and running. The main job of the buddies is to assist the challenger athletes in areas such as batting, base running, and defense.
Coaches Hayden, Bucceri, and David Etnire are all involved with helping the Challenger program out as well.
David Etnire explains, “Most of the Challenger practices happen on Wednesdays or Thursdays.”
Senior and founding player Connor Etnire, also David Etnire’s eldest son, explains, “The entire freshman team stays after their practice every Friday to help out. Older guys nowadays will go down on days where we don’t have a game. Each high school player pairs up with a challenger player and practices with them.”
Although there is usually a skill gap between the Challenger players, all players of special needs are welcome to play and are not required to pay the registration fee if families do not have the funds to do so.
Etnire adds, “Some players are better than others, so depending on how good they are it can be just playing catch and swinging for an hour or just running around with the kids. Every challenger player has a blast just being there, it is spread out across the field well so everyone is doing something and staying active.”
The Aliso Baseball team looks forward to continuing its good deeds throughout the following years to come. Although the seniors are going to be graduating this year, many more freshman teams will help preserve the legacy that the seniors once started four years ago.
