Help the Hayhursts Build a Baseball Community in Panama
Donation protected
How our big, lifechanging move to Panama is going!!!
My name is Seth Hayhurst. My wife Lindsay, our two boys Hank and Harvey moved to Panama in August of 2024. Our main goal in Panama is to start a baseball program that will instill the sense of community that we had and built in Dallas, TX. That community was built around baseball.
Baseball has an amazing way of bringing people together. Not only kids, but parents and all community members. We found that in Dallas and were eager to go to the edge of Panama to re-create it. Baseball gives kids a place to go to be active, but in the program we are creating, it also gives kids a place to learn leadership, self-sacrifice, teamwork, and how to become a positive, changing force in their own family as well as in the small communities they are a part of.
We started our program in the middle of August, 2024. Our first practice had around 20 kids. Our second practice, a week later, had over 50 kids show up!!!
The fun part of this story is the immediate obstacles we encountered! We found ourselves trying to coach 50 kids aged between 5-17 years old, boys and girls, skill levels from never thrown a ball to pretty darn good! Half the kids speak some form of English, half only Spanish! All of this on a field with a gravel infield, water runoff through shortstop, and coconut husks littering the outfield and infield (compliments of the monkeys, I believe). Needless to say, this was and still is one of the most challenging things I have ever tried!
However, the biggest challenge we face is the lack of equipment and gear. The few gloves I brought down with me were shared between kids as they finished taking a ground ball, handing it off to the next kid in line. Most of the kids show up shoeless, in shorts, no glove, and full of excitement and coachability.
Throughout the last 4 months, many friends and family have asked how they can help out. I have created this as a way to help out. We would love any donated gear, or funds to purchase gear to take back down with us in January.
We are back in the good ol' USA until January 7th. Our goal is to gather what we can and put it on a pallet to send back down to Panama via ship. This would need to be gathered and shipped down before we leave on January 7th. Please reach out to me if you have any questions, ideas, thoughts, anything!
We LOVE our baseball community here in Dallas, so even if you don't have gear, don't have funds at the moment, you can share this with your baseball people! That would be a huge help.
Lindsay (not so social media literate, but better than me!) has started an Instagram that we will post updates about our adventure and our team. If you would like to keep up with Howlers Baseball in Panama, click here:
Organizer
Seth Hayhurst
Organizer
Denton, TX