Fields of Dreams: Jenn and Tim Klein

For Jenn and husband Tim Klein, this project is their Field of Dreams.

Back in 2013, Tim Klein became head baseball coach at Lakeside High School in Nine Mile Falls. With the rising popularity of soccer in the U.S., baseball numbers have been steadily dwindling. By 2017, Coach Klein didn’t have enough players to fill rosters of both his varsity and junior varsity teams. He and Jenn talked, and they decided to chase their vision to make youth baseball in their small community “cool again.”

“That was our original motivation to create Lake Spokane Youth Sports, a volunteer organization to provide baseball and basketball leagues for kids pre-school to sixth grade from our area,” Jenn says. “Our hope was that by the time they get to high school they want to play baseball, softball, and of course, basketball.”

The Kleins inherited an established community basketball league that had 166 children the previous year. “We are techy people so we modernized the league by making a website and electronic registration.” Now that hoops league numbers 260 youngsters. They had 250 kids register to play baseball earlier this spring, the highest number so far.

Part of the concern was the travel distance from Nine Mile Falls to various sites in Spokane and the Spokane Valley, making travel time a big issue. Cost of playing in the Spokane leagues was another drawback.

So, in establishing Lake Spokane Youth Sports, the Klein’s took nothing in return. They work for free. And the toil is considerable.

Jenn organizes electronic registration, manages and updates the website, responds to “a million parent and coach emails with all kinds of questions,” recruits coaches, and makes balanced teams for the start of every season. Tim drags and lines all the fields and makes sure the gyms are picked up after every league day. A few friends of the Kleins – including the wives of Lakeside’s assistant baseball coach and head football coach – help tremendously by advertising on social media, bookkeeping, equipment organization, and ordering uniforms in different colors for each team and in a variety of sizes to fit every youthful physique.

One parent solicits local businesses for donations, and there is an option on each registration form to donate more than the registration cost. Registration fees are a mere $40 for a youngster to play basketball, $60 for baseball (with a $5 discount for each additional sibling registering). This helps pay for uniforms for all teams in both sports, a basketball for every player in the winter league, and for each team in baseball a five-gallon bucket of baseballs, catcher’s gear, bats, six helmets, and a binder for every coach with player information and contact numbers. Scholarships are made available for any child whose parents cannot pay the registration fee, no questions asked.

The only personnel paid for their efforts are the high school students recruited from Lakeside to referee and umpire the games. Lakeside School District allows the two leagues to use school gyms and fields for games and practice.

What Jenn loves most is the collective feel she gets from one community coming together to make these opportunities available to their kids.

“When I see tons of cars, and all these people – parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles – walking to the fields and the gyms to see these kids play,” says Jenn, “it reminds me how special it has been to create something far bigger than ourselves for our small community.”

The Klein’s Fields (and Gyms) of Dreams.