The Wallin family (Jeff, Brooke and Lori) attended the St. Jude Telethon last August at the Peoria Civic Center and brought along a check for $116,000 raised at the 2017 St. Jude Brad Wallin Memorial Tournament.

The number 14 will be an object of  special focus during the 2018 Brad Wallin Memorial Tournament to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

In addition to being the 14th year of the youth baseball tournament, which has raised almost $600,000 to benefit St. Jude’s Kids to date, it is also the baseball uniform number worn by the tournament’s namesake.

Wallin was a local boy who died in November 2004 at the age of 11, following a 13-month battle with Metastatic Osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer that often spreads to the lungs.

A tournament honoring Wallin, who was said to have loved baseball more than anything else, was played at the Rome Youth Association baseball fields in the summer of 2004, with Brad looking on, but unable to play due to his rapidly progressing illness. The tournament continued for a couple of years, following his passing, with proceeds benefiting the RYA. By 2008, Jeff and Lori Wallin, Brad’s parents, made the decision to assume control of the tournament named for their son and direct all profits to St. Jude’s Kids.

The first Brad Wallin tournament to benefit St. Jude featured 30 central Illinois teams spread across two divisions; it raised a modest $6,500. But the seeds were planted for something to come that neither Jeff nor Lori could have envisioned.

The 2009 tournament field blossomed to 68 teams, with $12,500 raised for St. Jude. Growth continued incrementally each year thereafter, with more and more teams, sponsors and locations wanting to participate in the no-longer-little tournament honoring the memory of a boy who just loved to play baseball.

By 2017 the Brad Wallin Memorial Tournament had grown to become one of the largest youth baseball tournaments in the Midwest, with 294 teams participating on dozens of central Illinois baseball diamonds. (A 2017 baseball tournament scheduled in the same time period by the owners of the fledgling Louisville Sluggers sports complex in Peoria was abruptly canceled because all area motel rooms had been booked by Wallin Tournament teams and families.)

On Aug. 5, 2017, Jeff, Lori and daughter Brooke delivered a check for $116,000 raised at the Wallin tourney to the St. Jude Telethon in Peoria, representing the largest donation to date.

And still, the tournament continues to grow.

“This year’s tournament has 338 teams in eight divisions with 655 scheduled games on 36 fields (including 12 at the Louisville Slugger complex),” said Jeff McMorrow, volunteer coordinator for the Wallin. “It will require between 300 and 400 volunteers to bring it all together.”

Jeff Wallin said he was amazed at the continued growth of the tournament.

“They are coming this year from all over the state of Illinois, with teams from Missouri and Iowa,” he said. “It continues to blossom and grow, and honestly, we don’t even advertise this tournament. We have a website and a Facebook page and a signup sheet. But everyone knows what this tournament is about, they know the cause and where their money is going to.

“It continues to grow because we run a good show, we try to make it fun for the kids, and we try to show them that (baseball) is not just about winning or losing, it’s about life’s lessons. These kids are making a difference in the future of childhood cancer by supporting us.”

The tournament’s lifeblood lies in the strength of its volunteer corps, both Wallin and McMorrow agree.

“There are different tiers of volunteers, starting with five or six close advisers who work with Jeff and Lori pretty much all through the year. And we have a core group of about 40 who run six locations and head up their own sets of volunteers. This core group attends all of our planning meetings throughout the year,” said McMorrow. “In just the last couple of years we have used a signup website to get outside volunteers. We have 335 openings for volunteers to do things like work our merchandise tents, perform field maintenance, run gates, and help check in 338 teams when they arrive.”

The volunteer army is comprised of community members and civic groups such as the Chillicothe St. Jude Run team, which provides more than 100 volunteers each year, according to McMorrow. 

The tournament is an acknowledged revenue-enhancer for the host communities, including nearby Chillicothe, which offers six diamonds for use during the Wallin.

“We get a lot of out-of-town teams that visit a lot of different businesses here in town,” said Amanda Oedenwaldt, a Chillicothe Chamber of Commerce leader and owner of two eateries in town. “We have teams in constantly. At our restaurant, Castaways, we actually do a pizza, wing and salad buffet all weekend so that we can move them through faster, because they have limited time. The Brad Wallin has impacted us in a big way, but now that the tournament has expanded elsewhere, we don’t get quite as many teams in as we used to get. But we are still packed, and it is still very busy.”

In addition to team entry fees, raffle sales and silent auctions of goods and services during the tournament raise extra funds for St. Jude, as do merchandise sales of shirts, bracelets and other items emblazoned with the Wallin logo. These additional sales take on monumental importance considering the lion’s share of team entry fees are used to pay umpires (more $50,000 this year),  buy baseballs and trophies, and for other tournament expenses.

Donations are accepted at the tournament games, with 100 percent going to St. Jude. Some of the visiting teams conduct fundraisers in the days and weeks prior to the tournament and arrive in Peoria with a donation to hand to tournament organizers for St. Jude.

“We get a lot of help from a lot of different people, even from outside communities,” Jeff Wallin said.

With the 14th Brad Wallin Memorial Tournament just a week away, Jeff took a moment to reflect on what the success of the event has come to mean to Lori, Brooke and himself:

“I think it is an honor to our son and what we are doing to keep his memory alive. We are making a difference, and that’s the reason we continue to do it. We want to keep our son’s name alive and we want to continue to help those that might need St. Jude down the road,” said Wallin. “Granted, there are times that it is not fun, and it is a lot of work. Countless hours go into this by countless people. But the end result is a nice $100,000 check for St. Jude at the end of the five days, which is remarkable, in our eyes.”

For more information on the Brad Wallin Tournament, including a biography of the courageous boy who wore number 14 proudly, visit www.bradwallintourney.com.

—A MATTER OF LABOR, LOVE–