Friday Features: Christmas trip a ‘life-changing’ experience for Lee baseball
By Maurice Patton
Ryan Beamish didn’t know what to expect when he reached the
Dominican Republic with his
Lee University baseball teammates last month.
The freshman infielder said the week-long experience changed his life.
“I don’t know how else to put it,” Beamish said of the excursion, during which he and his teammates played six games against local competition while conducting clinics, visiting orphanages and churches and doing some team bonding.
“I have to reflect on it more and more to really understand how it impacted me so deeply. I realize I’m lucky to have been born here and to be able to share the message of God with those people. It’s the definition of life-changing, in my book. It’s powerful.”
It’s probably not the first time veteran Lee coach
Mark Brew has seen a trip like this have an effect like that. Brew, who spent 10 years as an assistant at the Cleveland, Tenn., school and is now in his 10
th year as the Flames’ head coach, had been involved with five previous trips to Cuba and/or the Dominican.
“It’s something we periodically do,” he said. “We have a belief that service to others is important; that’s part of it. Secondarily, Lee University students have a cross-cultural requirement. They have to do some sort of study in a different environment than the U.S. So they get (class) credit for it as well, but we were doing these before the school brought that requirement on.”
Strictly from a baseball aspect, the trip gets Brew’s crew some additional work against some talented opponents – and may expose him and his program to a potential recruit or two.
“Both Cuba and the Dominican Republic are huge baseball countries,” the coach said. “They’re the No. 1 provider, per capita, of baseball players. So there’s a common language, even though they speak Spanish and we speak English.
“There’s an opportunity to interact on the baseball field, do clinics. And our coaches and players get to share with the players and fans there. It’s nice to be able to share your faith with them. And it’s certainly helpful, being able to see the guys on the field a bit more.”
Logistically, the international travel isn’t an undertaking to be taken lightly. Planning starts months before, with fundraising and passports taking a priority. Ultimately, 27 of the team’s 30 players made the trip.
“One guy went down to the last week and had some paperwork issues that weren’t processed properly,” Brew said. “He got done two or three days before we got on the plane. We had two or three that had individual reasons they couldn’t travel at that time. But that’s the by-product of it.
“It’s a phenomenal experience, not just to play, but to share a life-changing experience. The orphanage visit, it’s an amazing experience for the guys to play with those girls but devastating to have to leave at the end of the day.”
While Beamish – who grew up just outside of Nashville – was struck by the diamonds he and his teammates played on while visiting, that wasn’t the lasting memory.
“The fields some of those kids play on is what we’d probably call ‘terrible’,” he said. “Some of the stuff is pretty worn down. But the orphanages, the sugar cane villages we visited – it was pretty eye-opening. You’ve got small houses, housing 40 people. No electricity, no running water.
“You play with those girls (at the orphanage), and they just want to braid your hair or play volleyball. They want that interaction, to see that somebody cares for them; it doesn’t matter if they’re American or Dominican. They don’t know us, we’re complete strangers, yet they want that connection. It gives you a sense of, there’s more meaning to this than just baseball, just playing. There’s a certain aspect of life they yearn for that we can bring to them.”
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