Learn how Blake built Recovery Community Softball (RCS) into a 50-team league that champions sobriety, connection, and sportsmanship—showcasing the life-changing power of sports.
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Welcome to Episode #23 of the Sold Out podcast, where we interview league organizers across the country for tips on how to sell out and grow leagues.
In this episode, we chat with Blake from Recovery Community Softball (RCS) in St. Paul, Minnesota. Blake shares the inspiring story of RCS, a league founded in 1976 by men in recovery, and how it has grown into a supportive community with over 50 teams today. From his personal journey with addiction to leading the league through challenges like COVID and evolving its culture to be more inclusive, Blake’s hands-on leadership has been pivotal. He discusses the importance of sportsmanship, fostering connections, and creating a space where recovery is celebrated through the joy of softball. Blake also highlights practical strategies for league organizers, such as maintaining relationships with local parks, establishing strict sportsmanship rules, and providing thoughtful amenities to ensure fairness and enjoyment for all players. His story demonstrates the transformative power of sports in recovery and how a committed leader can nurture a thriving league.
Blake’s story showcases how sports can save lives, build community, and provide individuals in recovery with something to look forward to every week.
Listen to the full episode to learn more about his approach to leadership, community building, and how Recovery Community Softball became a beacon of hope and camaraderie in St. Paul.
Below is the full transcript from this episode. The Sold Out Podcast is available on Spotify and Apple, or you can watch the entire interview on our YouTube Channel!
Tune in every other week to hear AREENA interview the country's best league organizers about their success in selling out leagues consistently.
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Lance (00:01.05)
Alright, today we have Blake from RCS Softball. Thanks for being here, Blake. So let's get started with the basics of kind of where you're located and what you're running and how it got started.
Blake Hjelmeland (00:12.551)
I'm Blake Yomeland. league, Recovery Community South Ball, is based out of St. Paul, Minnesota. The league was started in 1976 by a handful of men in recovery. There's a pretty couple of nationally well -known recovery facilities in Minnesota.
call us the land of 10 ,000 treatment centers. And the recovery community and AA community here is thriving in Minnesota. I was actually born here. I grew up overseas. my dad enlisted when I was an infant. And softball is a big part of the military culture. Both of my folks were.
Lance (00:45.455)
haha
Blake Hjelmeland (01:08.487)
were competitive players. My mom only played a few years, but my dad played for a long time. you know, it was just, it was fun watching them grow up, you know, and then watching how he played and, you know, the respect that he had for his teammates, his opponents. You know, I actually started keeping the book for them when I was age 10, 10 years old, I already knew how to do stats.
keep the score, no difference between a base hit and an error. And I pretty much worshiped the ground he walked on. you I started, you know, me and my brother, of course, played baseball, but, you know, I was at all of his games watching what a lot of the other kids were, you know, playing and doing other stuff. And I started playing when I was 20 and up in Washington State and
Within a few years, I was playing at an extremely high level. So all I did was work and play softball. Coached a couple of state championship teams at a young age. Yeah, most of my friends, also all players, I bounced around the West Coast for about 20 years and unfortunately I had a problem with
alcohol and Decided that you know, I wanted to move up to Minnesota and I Was living in Tucson, Arizona at the time and I pretty much packed all my stuff and headed up here Took me a couple years to get sober and about one year sobriety There was you know start talking about softball at a meeting and you know the meeting
Outright mental defectives. They were going to start a team and asked me if I could play. I'm like, yeah, you know, I've played a little bit of softball in my life, you know, and, I mean, it was nothing as far as a competitive level that I was used to, but, you know, it was very recreational, but I, you know, saw this league and the guy had been running it,
Blake Hjelmeland (03:30.242)
They call it the St. Paul's CD League back at the time. There was around 15 teams usually. And I mean, I had a time in my life. mean, it was fun. was a big, big part of my early recovery. I met a lot of people.
You know, had a couple friends that were pretty good players and you know, the next year we decided to start a, you know, tournament team and playing some leagues and we're very successful. We didn't play in a lot of tournaments, but you know, we were always, you know, one of the last teams left. You know, it's none of our guys were ever hung over in the morning. So, and they weren't up all night drinking the night before. you know, we had a
Van, know, drinking, unfortunately, has always been a big part of the softball culture, you know, same thing with like bowling and other, you know, sports that adults do once they're done, you know, with college or whatever. But, you know, drinking beer and stuff's a big part of softball. Of course, there's no drugs in this league or or drinking. And after about...
And then, you know, I started a competitive team and moved into the upper division. cause you know, the league was split into two divisions at the time, the upper and the lower and, you know, I played lower the first year. and then, besides the tournament team, I put my own team in the upper division. And after about four or five years, the guy that was running the league didn't really, you know, he'd been doing it for a long time and he wasn't.
really motivated to run the league anymore. It's quite a bit of work I found out and quite a bit of, you know, alcoholics said they have their character defects and they might be sober, but you know, sometimes they like to complain. like to argue, but it's like that pretty much in all aspects of the game. I mean, I've been around the game for 40 years, but there's this thing and you know,
Blake Hjelmeland (05:40.972)
And they about, you know, service work and, know, like people are treated boomer because sometimes, you know, things that weren't really going all that well with the league, but they were treating him like, you know, it was like making a pot of coffee at a meeting, you know, or do another kind of recovery service work. I just decided I was going to, you know, the league was going to collapse and no one wanted to do it. And I have had a lot of experience as a player and.
I decided I was going to go ahead and give it a shot and had no idea what I was asking for at the moment. And I kind of learned as I went, you know, I had a friend of mine who signed my umpires for me, figured out the financial end of it. A big part of that is building relationships with park managers. We're, renting these parks from them. We are an independent league.
Most softball league Lance like 95 % of them are usually run through a town or a city that actually owned the fields that they play on so we're a little different, you know, we have to pay for the fields to rent them and So I started learning the business aspect of it right away First year or 17 teams that was 2014
Then it got bumped up to like 24 teams the next year. And then the next year it was like close to 30 teams. And then we started playing fall ball. friend of mine, Chris Green, a big kid who was a big part of the league for a while. He moved to Connecticut last year. Came up with this idea of, you know, let's just do fall ball. So we started off with I think eight teams in fall ball.
That was 2016. And then I threw together like an all -star team of players from my league. We were called the crew and we went on a full blown tournament circuit. My old tournament team would play in like two tournaments a year. This team played in about around 15 and we were pretty wildly successful. You know, we,
Blake Hjelmeland (08:05.4)
Won a bunch of tournaments, we won state. We went down to Florida and took like 23rd in the world's, out of like 150 teams. We took, I think sixth for ASA nationals. We were an all sober team and we were very, we represented ourselves on the field in a very positive manner. So to speak, really good sportsmanship.
Praying, know after every game You know, course no drinking You know and just playing hard and playing the game that the way I was brought up to play the way I always play the way my dad always played so that kind of really put the league on the map because You know more people started talking about it because of the success of the tournament team like wow, this is this is an alt
All sober team and they're they're coming in here and they're putting in work, you know So I would say by 2018 I've had around 40 teams So between 2018 up until this last year, know steadily growing a couple teams every year and then this last year I topped off at 52 teams for summer ball renting four different complexes
ball ball 36 teams this year, you know went from eight to thirty six and You know that time frame I Guess I can tell you Lance. I mean, you know, I've never had to do any kind of marketing or put the word out Word of mouth is the best the best marketing there is and
As a league director, show up every Friday night. I'm there every Friday night watching, talking to the parents, the friends, the family members, the coaches, the players, and making myself present. And that's a big part of it. I'm not a very tech savvy guy. I've had help from some people. I had a guy.
Lance (10:08.506)
Hmm.
Blake Hjelmeland (10:29.106)
make a website for me. And we had to start purchasing insurance to rent the parks. mean, we had to get through COVID. There's been a lot of ups and downs, but I've had a lot of support from the coaches and league members, but also from treatment center directors and
people that own sober living organizations and you know, they had their teams in my league for double digit years, some of them. And, you know, there's all I hear about is how much everyone loves Friday night softball and how all these clients, you know, are not enjoying their recovery and then have anything to look forward to. And, you know, all of a sudden it's just like, they got this Friday night softball deal going on and it's, know, consuming some of them.
And a lot of them fortunately became, know, got a new addiction going on softball. know, the numbers, know, softball participation is down 30 % nationwide. A lot of leagues are dying off. I'm actually having people start to ask me to run more independent leagues for people who just want to play that don't do drugs and alcohol.
Lance (11:29.114)
you
Blake Hjelmeland (11:57.779)
The drink a little bit, you know, while they're playing and stuff like that. And just to be clear and transparent, the elite division in RCS softball on Friday nights has gotten smaller and smaller just because there just aren't as many players. know, most of the league is recreational players. I'd say about 70, around 75 % of them are recreational players. So there's only certain amount of players that can play up in the major division. So.
Lance (12:02.596)
Hmm.
Blake Hjelmeland (12:27.047)
We do have, we call them normies, people that, you know, don't drink hardly ever, or if at all, and they've been quite good to the league. I got two brand new bats. One of them just gave me, you know, to give to other league members. The Minnesota softball community in general, outside of the recovery community has been very generous to us on Friday nights. I know a lot of
People that are pro players, get new equipment every year. They donate all their equipment to the league. A lot of these kids are coming out here, know, a lot of them don't even have much more than the clothes on their back. You know, a lot of them are from out of state. A lot of them don't have equipment, so.
Lance (12:59.738)
Yeah.
Lance (13:14.362)
So did this, is this based from an institution that's up there or this was just like a nonprofit league that had been kind of running for this community like when you got into it or how was it sort of set up?
Blake Hjelmeland (13:27.091)
It was said the league was started in the 70s by a bunch of Men in recovery and Just kind of kept on going and going there were different guys every now and then and Old -timer will come up to me. Yeah, you know I ran that league for a couple years in 1990s or whatever 1980s But it was always you know a smaller league sometimes I guess it got bigger, you know, we got up to like
20 or 30 teams back in the 90s. I'm not sure I wasn't around but yeah
Lance (14:02.862)
Got it. But it was always like independent organization from any sort of treatment center or anything like that. It was like you were saying some guys in recovery just had their own thing going and then it's always been like that. So is it always people who are in recovery or can anyone come and play or you guys kind of vet like you have to like, you kind of talked about normies or people outside that community. How does it work to be able to play?
Blake Hjelmeland (14:28.371)
Well, okay, so We only let normies play in the upper division To be honest with you a Lot of guys that you know, empire three or four nights a week, know, there's a lot of guys You know Todd the insurance salesman that plays once a week, know with his buddies It likes to go and have two or three beers. I mean those kinds of people they have no interest in participating in our league You know
Lance (14:54.681)
Hmm.
Blake Hjelmeland (14:57.875)
but, but we do take, you know, anyone that's in recovery from anything, you know, like, mean, had a young lady to join our league. She's been in the league for 10 years now. And when she, first got asked to sell by a friend of hers, and she, she had so much fun out there. And I finally, after a couple of years, she was like, you know,
You know, have chronic depression myself and we had become friends and she you know shared openly about her issues with her mental health and she's like, you know, I've always felt like this is family here and to be honest with you the first couple years, you know, I Said I was an alcoholic when I'm really not I just have really bad mental health issues and This is what I want to be on Friday night. So then that's when
Lance (15:46.458)
Hmm.
Blake Hjelmeland (15:49.504)
After talking to a few other people, I decided to change the name to Recovery Community Softball. And another friend of mine had an idea, you know, they started a Recovery Community Hockey League up here. There was a Recovery Community Pickleball League going on for a little bit. And I, so I'm just like, you know, making it, hey, you know, we're open to anyone if you, if you've got, have mental illness issues or, you know, eating disorder.
Lance (15:57.128)
Mm.
Lance (16:15.225)
Mm.
Blake Hjelmeland (16:17.547)
Drugs, alcohol, you know, and if you're struggling with addiction, it is life threatening. You know, you're, welcome to join our league. We're not going to be, you know, silver snobs and, and, and exclude people who this might be, you know, a life changing experience for more. There have been quite a few people that have came in and filled in or subbed on a Friday night and then realized, wow.
I can actually go and play softball and I don't have to drink four or five beers. I can't even count how many men and women I know that, I mean, they weren't necessarily alcoholics, but they drank often and quite a few of them are sober now just because we showed them a new experience. We showed them that, you know, that you can still have fun playing ball without alcohol involved. yeah, so that's also been a very
Lance (17:12.974)
Yeah. Yeah.
Blake Hjelmeland (17:17.396)
rewarding. Yeah.
Lance (17:19.16)
Yeah, so I mean the growth it sounds like has been awesome. It sounds like it's as big as it's or bigger than it's ever been and you grew pretty quickly. You talked about word of mouth is the best marketing, but what I mean, do you attribute that to anything in particular? Like were there maybe a two or three things you did really different than sort of the previous director in terms of how you ran the league that you attribute to just allowing, you know, it to be such a great experience for people.
Blake Hjelmeland (17:46.283)
Absolutely. When I first started playing in a league, there were maybe like 10 women that played in a league, but the league director made them hit men's balls. I mean, they make women's balls for a reason. Women's balls are smaller. So one of the first thing I did is even though it's not truly a true coed league, I bought a bunch of women's balls and told all my umpires, Hey, when a girl goes up to bat, just switch the ball out. Pretty simple process.
Lance (18:00.57)
Mm.
Blake Hjelmeland (18:15.509)
Cause you know, most teams, not in a major division, but especially in the rec division, know, some teams have three, four or five girls on their team. And you know, that's not putting them on a competitive ground, you know, playing against the men and having to hit a men's ball. So I made that switch right away. Another thing I did is I was very cognizant about what teams
Lance (18:38.522)
Mm
Blake Hjelmeland (18:44.842)
had good players and cause I mean, before there were teams that were getting beat by like 30 runs, you know, so I started splitting the divisions up. So right, right now I have major, minor, Maurer, peace out to our boy, Joe Maurer. He actually lives in a neighborhood I'm in right now. and grand in here in St. Paul, he's a local boy. So, you know, I decided I'd name a division after him. we all love him up here in Minnesota.
And then rec one and then the wreck division started getting so big that I had to make a wreck two division. So, you know, I'd say probably around. Around 30 out of the 52 teams are wrecked one and wreck two teams, so. It's fun watching them play.
Lance (19:34.202)
Got it. So yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, on making women feel comfortable, but then the competitive balance, sounds like that was like a huge focus that trying not to have people kind of be blown out. Is it how many teams are in each division and what is it? Do you get promoted and relegated or how does that work?
Blake Hjelmeland (19:54.353)
Yeah, it depends on how you do the major divisions had four to up to ten teams the minor usually has Six to twelve the mauer usually has around ten teams and then yeah, yeah, you know if you do really good then you know Then I move you up a division the next year or if you're taking your lumps and getting beat Then I drop you down a division. you know, and then I also including in the end of price
I have a double elimination tournament for winter and fall ball. don't know of hardly any other leagues to do that. Mostly don't even have playoffs. So you're getting, you know, a lot of, you're getting a lot of bang for your buck when you, when you sign up for, for my league, spend about $1 in trophies every year. I hand out a gift cards to like, you know, most improved player, best sportsmanship coach of the year.
Lance (20:30.874)
Yeah
Lance (20:41.593)
and
Blake Hjelmeland (20:51.321)
you know Yeah, most most valuable player for your division and you know, I I spread it around and stuff, you know, make sure that People are getting recognized and but i'd say probably the most important thing is that i'm present I mean, it's hard to see what I mean you can look at the scorecards and see how good teams are but You know league members
Lance (20:52.602)
Wow, how do you get that?
Lance (21:07.726)
Mm -hmm.
Blake Hjelmeland (21:16.56)
You know, they want a league director that's going to be there every Friday. And then, you know, they want to make sure that I've got good umpires out there and that they're taking care of their job and that they know the rules. but they also know that I have very strict rules on sportsmanship and, know, trash talking and chirping. A lot of that stuff that goes, that goes on and a lot of soft play that goes dig, it goes on in all, in all leagues. It's, know,
It goes, it goes on in our league sometimes, but if they know I'm there or they figured the chances of me being there every Friday, you know, the likelihood is that the sportsmanship is going to be the way I want it to be. And, know, after every game, after every, double header, you know, players from both teams, getting a circle and, know, we, we do a prayer circle. yeah, unfortunately, probably.
Lance (22:10.454)
Mm.
Blake Hjelmeland (22:14.81)
We lose probably around five league members per year on average about that since I've been around, I'd say probably. Yeah, mostly the heroin overdoses, a lot of young kids. Yeah, so.
Lance (22:22.296)
Mmm. Yeah.
Lance (22:28.484)
Hmm You focus on that and do some of the prayers kind of around around that. Yeah
Blake Hjelmeland (22:34.724)
Yeah, yeah, we focused on the prayer and the brotherhood, so.
Lance (22:39.886)
Yeah, Yeah, sounds like a really strong
Blake Hjelmeland (22:41.701)
Wouldn't want one the young ones,
Blake Hjelmeland (22:50.758)
It's hard when you see a 22 year old go, mean, that's what drugs, know, drugs are deadly, so that's what happens. So, yeah.
Lance (23:01.048)
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry to do that. I know that's tough, but it sounds like this is a place for most people to get away from that. And what you're doing is impressive. you're very hands -on, you're very present. And I'm curious about a little, you know, the tactics of that, like how you pull off such a great community. you mentioned, you know, sportsmanship and most improved player and those. How are you getting, how are you doing that? that?
Is that just you out there like you're watching and knowing or are you engaging players to get that?
Blake Hjelmeland (23:34.533)
I'm watching the umpires are talking to me. I've got it like Usually I mean my first four five years, you know, I pretty much did everything by myself. I had me and a gentleman named Devin Rabinowitz who? Been friends with since 2009. I think he joined the league the year after I joined the league He did the website and I did everything else after the second year
I knew enough umpires where I could start doing my own scheduling. And that's probably the biggest part of, running a league besides running the park. You got to make sure there's softballs there. You got to make sure there's an umpire there. And, know, it's on Friday nights and a lot of guys, they don't like working on Friday nights. so I started a committee and you know, there's like maybe like seven to 10 of us usually, that.
Lance (24:18.105)
Yeah.
Lance (24:30.681)
Mm.
Blake Hjelmeland (24:33.187)
You know, they helped me make decisions, you know, they helped me lock the park down, you know, pretty much they're my eyes and ears. mean, besides them, I mean, I got like 50 spies. I mean, they're not really spies, but people who have been in the league for a long time, or it'll be like, you know, I mean, sometimes, you know, a new guy might come out of recovery, you know, they've only been sober for a couple of weeks and you know, they still got to, they're still getting a recovery figured out, you know, sometimes.
Lance (24:45.964)
Yeah.
Blake Hjelmeland (25:01.376)
You guys can get a little bit emotional and you know, the key is just you know, explain to them, know, you know, these are rules. This is how we operate. And if you want to be a part of it, this is how you need to behave. Very strict rules on swearing. Although it does happen, know, swearing is a big one. So yeah, you know.
Lance (25:17.528)
Mmm.
Lance (25:25.828)
Got it. So does this, this committee is how you get best sportsmanship and most improved players, like you guys sort of collaborate and vote on that kind of stuff or?
Blake Hjelmeland (25:36.437)
Yeah, usually, not usually, I usually pick them. But, you know, they're like, have one guy now who's, know, takes care of all the financial aspects of it. I have one guy that does a lot of promoting and making videos that we've got our recovery community softball page where I share a lot of information. I've got a, separate page just for the coaches. and you know, there's probably about.
Lance (26:01.85)
Hmm.
Blake Hjelmeland (26:05.339)
six, seven years ago, these guys from California started just traveling softball circuit called a clean and sober softball association or whatever. So a lot of players from our league travel out of state, Florida, California, Texas, Utah, Colorado. Those are like the big five that a lot of people go to. Yeah. But you know, these guys that are running these tournaments, I mean, they're running, you know,
one big tournament a year. CS NSA does probably about five or six. You know, but my RCS softball pretty much starts in March, although we don't start the league until the last week in April. But the league's gotten so big, you know, I have to have three different manager meetings now. you know, we take Memorial Day off and
Lance (27:01.796)
Mm.
Blake Hjelmeland (27:05.929)
Fourth of July off and that's really about it. And there's games every Friday up until mid October. We roll right from summer, right in the fall ball. So.
Lance (27:19.518)
Yeah, so yeah, it sounds like it's just a super strong culture and you say you're pretty strict about like swearing and obviously that probably includes fights and things that also can happen in sports and other leagues and whatnot. So are you to enforce that? mean, you're out there. there rules that you do as well? And, you know, I'm sure you stop play and maybe talk to people, but are there also rules on, you know, losing points in the standings or when a team might even get
removed or a player removed, do you have those rules kind of upfront or how have you found a good way to sort of that culture?
Blake Hjelmeland (27:57.405)
Well, mean, luckily, I mean, in 10 years, I think I've maybe had maybe one or two guys per year, kicked out of a game. if depending on the umpire and, the information I get, I think I've maybe had to suspend a couple of guys for a week or two. other than that, mean,
You know, there's been other instances where, you know, league members were not good representatives of the league, so to speak. And, you know, there's been two people, I think, two or three people that, you know, weren't weren't welcomed back just, you know, based on, you know, behaviors and incidences.
And to be honest with you, mean, you know...
It's, you know, these players are all welcome back, but, know, sometimes it'd be like, you know, you just need, maybe they need to take a year off and, you know, get it together and stuff like that. I mean, it's for a variety of reasons. We've never had any physical contact with an umpire or a player to player. We've never had any incidences in the parking lot. You know, we've had.
you know, a few instances where guys, you know, kind of got a little bit too aggressive and a little bit too much testosterone going on. And but, you know, other than that, compared to other leagues, I mean, we've got it pretty good. mean, there's there's very, very little drama, if any. You know, the things things run pretty smooth. I'm running summertime, I'm running four parks, which are all, you know, a couple of miles apart.
Blake Hjelmeland (29:59.705)
So I stopped by each park for the early games and the late games. So that's eight different stops I make every Friday night.
Lance (30:16.923)
Can you hear me cut out a little bit there? Can you hear me okay?
Blake Hjelmeland (30:19.417)
Yeah, just saw I was cutting off a little bit. yeah. But other than that, mean, there's the rules and the sportsmanship rules.
Lance (31:01.102)
Hey, can you hear me,
Blake Hjelmeland (31:23.017)
Okay.
Blake Hjelmeland (32:25.093)
Okay.
Blake Hjelmeland (32:31.439)
Okay.
Blake Hjelmeland (33:43.575)
You don't know what line they had.
Lance (00:02.373)
Okay, so you're saying that there's one more thing?
Blake Hjelmeland (00:04.413)
Yeah. So there's, know, the old lead director, you know, he had this thing where like, if you got caught using, you had, were suspended for like a month, you know, and I never really understood that rule. mean, my, my thing is everyone, you know, people relapse and recovery, you know, I would rather you're at the ball field on a Friday night and you're safe and you're playing softball, even if you just relapsed five days ago, then, you know, cause I mean, that's just,
Didn't really work people were still using people were still relapsing people were still dying, you know or some people that You know had approached me and be like, you know, hey, I'm struggling. I'm having a problem, you know And and you know, I'm like no, I mean if you have a desire to stop drinking You know, you're welcome to play so
Lance (00:39.727)
Mm.
Lance (00:58.393)
Yeah. Yeah.
Blake Hjelmeland (00:59.547)
Yeah, the bad behavior, that's one thing that a lot of people that play in other leagues always tell me whenever they sub in our league on Friday nights. They always talk about how different the culture is and how great the sportsmanship is and how there's so much love and brotherhood and sisterhood going on at the fields and everything. So yeah.
Lance (01:20.281)
Yeah, I mean, it sounds amazing what you've been able to do in terms of the culture that you've built. And, you know, I think I love this space because I think a lot of leagues have great impact on people in terms of community, getting together, getting some exercise, getting out of the house. But yours in particular, obviously, you know, is having an even more extraordinary impact. And it just sounds like all these there's lots of little things that you're doing, tactical things, but
Blake Hjelmeland (01:40.987)
Yeah.
Lance (01:46.989)
My takeaway is just the amount of love and care that you have, that you're out there all the time, you genuinely care about all your players, and are going the extra bit to ensure that it's a really safe and good space for everybody to come together. How would you advise if somebody else wanted to do something like you're doing? If you had to start over and move to a new city somewhere else and you wanted to build a community like this.
I guess there's probably some unique things about where you are and all that, but what advice would you give to get something like this off the ground somewhere new if you were starting over?
Blake Hjelmeland (02:24.208)
Well, first of all, you know, be involved in recovery and start talking to the treatment centers and sober living is like booming right now in the United States. It's a big industry. And to start talking to the managers in the treatment center and you know, most meetings will let you make announcements. There's a lot of leagues, that are meeting teams, you know, teams that just go to one meeting. Majority of them are from treatment centers and sober living.
I just start spreading the word, you know, and even if you got to start small, you know, the key is, is, is finding a park to play in. that's, that's the biggest one, especially if you're an independent organization, finding a place to play. and you know, just spreading the word, you know, there's a few other sober leagues, I guess, popping up here and there, you know, and I always tell people, you know, they can contact me for anything, Blake Yomeland,
Lance (02:54.82)
Hmm.
Blake Hjelmeland (03:23.468)
Recovery community softball. I'd be more than happy to help. You know, I'm umpire Full -time umpire as well. I've got a lot of experience coaching and You know, know, know the game in and out so And you know just kind of create that culture of you know recovery, you know and then networking and meeting new people and there's people to join our league from out of state that
didn't have any one up here they knew now they got like a whole new family and they're always hanging out with each other. They're always doing things. They're going to claim tournaments out of state, you know, I mean, so yeah, it's the networking part is a huge, huge part of sustaining a good recovery.
Lance (03:57.658)
Yeah.
Lance (04:08.643)
Are you facilitating the networking at all? when someone new joins the league, are you helping them to get connected or does it just happen?
Blake Hjelmeland (04:15.617)
Yeah, I mean, can usually help them get on a team if they're persistent enough. I always just tell them to show up, show up on Friday. Someone's bound to need a sub, you know, show up and you're there and boom, there you go. You know, I asked him to make an announcement. Some I'm not necessarily don't have the time to place every person on a team. do unfortunately get a lot of messages from people who want to join a team. But like I said, you know, you just got to get out there and show up. We've been able to start a few free agent teams in the past.
Lance (04:21.924)
Mmm.
Lance (04:27.513)
Yeah, yeah.
Blake Hjelmeland (04:44.92)
But the key is, is finding a coach and you know, yeah. And securing the funding, which, know, isn't, the, our fees are probably lower than, I watch, I know they're lower than anywhere else in the twin cities on average in the Metro region for what you're getting the 20 games. And another thing too, I make sure the teams get all 20 of their games. If they don't, then I refund their money back and then not a lot of other leagues do that, you know? So.
Lance (04:48.527)
Mmm.
Blake Hjelmeland (05:15.339)
You know, I always make sure that teams get what they're paying for. you know, I mean, of course too, you know, you got to be in a city or an area where there's, you know, a good amount of recovery going on too, as well. So far as a normal league, I mean, I guess it's kind of the same thing, but you need, you know, you need teams to get a league going. Just like an AA meeting, you know, people got to show up to keep the meeting going. So.
Lance (05:42.725)
Do you have any, guess maybe last question just on that because I hear that topic a lot about finding venues or facilities to play being a challenge and you mentioned that. Do you have any advice or tips on how to create a partnership with the city to get space? Has there been anything that you've done that's more or less effective?
Blake Hjelmeland (06:01.501)
Yeah, well, I mean, we already we were renting from from two different facilities when I started. Now I rent from four or five and just, you know, talk to the park manager, just be like, hey, you know, this is the Recovery League. It's saving people's lives. It's helping their recovery. You know, make sure you pay them, of course. You know, I always make sure teams are picking up. They got to pick up all their trash after every game. They got to keep the fields clean, you know.
They all know the rules, you know, we make sure and we take care of our parks and make sure and maintain that relationship with them. And usually I haven't had a problem. There's some parks that won't rent outside entities around here. but I mean, that's just kind of how they do business, you know, and a lot of parks have big tournaments on the weekend, so they don't want their beams up. They don't want their fields being used on Friday nights.
Lance (06:50.682)
Mm -hmm.
Blake Hjelmeland (06:54.609)
I have a women's league that I ran on Tuesday nights that's an open league that's to do pretty well too.
Lance (07:02.093)
Nice, okay. So just call up parks, be sort of mission oriented about what you're trying to do in the community and see if you can find somewhere that's a fit. It's basically how you kind of approach it.
Lance (00:01)
Thanks Blake. I really appreciate your time and yeah, I love what you're doing out there. It sounds like it's having a huge amount of impact and hopefully this can be helpful for somebody else who might want to do something similar in their community.
Blake Hjelmeland (00:15)
Yeah, thanks Lance. Yeah, you know, we do other stuff too. You know, like we do clothing drives for people in the winter time for league members and you know, we donate equipment. We do a lot of great stuff. I'd be more than happy to hear from anyone in recovery. All over the United States, yeah, recovery community softball and thank you very much for your time, Lance. I appreciate you letting me be involved and let me share my experience. It's been a life changing experience.
Lance (00:31)
Yeah.
I appreciate you, Blake. Thank you.
Blake Hjelmeland (00:47)
Alright, have a blessed day brother. Peace.
Lance (00:51)
You too.
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