Superhero recap and off to Extra Life United

Another Superhero Night is in the books, but we’ll have to wait and see if we stuck the landing.

Saturday’s event with the Medicine Hat Mavericks baseball team saw a good crowd in attendance, a marvellous first pitch from honoured guest Keagan, and lots of smiling faces at Athletic Park.

We were sad not to see the 501st Legion Star Wars character volunteers due to a scheduling mixup, but the Medicine Hat Skateboard Association came through with face painting, stickers, and even a Spider-man in costume to match the special edition jerseys the players wore.

You can still buy the jerseys for $105 at the team store, and we’re sure there will be a donation from the proceeds at some point this summer, but for now all we can report is the $139 that was donated directly at our table. As we always say, every dollar counts.

On the heels of Superhero Night, we are now in Kansas City to participate in the Children’s Miracle Network Ignite conference and Extra Life United, where we’ll play games and hopefully win some money for the Alberta Children’s Hospital.

It’s been five years since we last attended Extra Life United in person, and even then it was just me (Sean) who went. Between the pandemic and the fact it happened right in the middle of Trish’s tax season every year, it simply hasn’t worked out for us.

We are excited to see many old friends. We were initially invited to the first ever ELU in 2014, but Dominic was going through too much to consider going anywhere. Once the next event happened in 2016 he had passed away, and we debuted the video about him in the place (Orlando) where he died just six months earlier. Needless to say, it was a tremendously emotional experience, and the connections we made then will never be forgotten.

I went by myself in 2017 since Sam was just a month old and Trish wasn’t cleared to fly after the C-section. The three of us went in 2018 with Sam running rampant in her onesie through the venue’s halls. I went again by myself in 2019.

Things transitioned online during the pandemic, and I even won a tournament during the 2022 event. They were back in person last year but it was a really difficult tax season for Trish, so nobody from our family went to Florida.

This year’s event is different. United is no longer part of Children’s Miracle Hospitals’ main annual conference, which still takes place in Orlando in spring. Extra Life has grown and this ELU feels like a reboot of sorts, getting back to the reason why it began: a celebration of the important work being done to change kids’ health, and a time to be reinvigorated as we promote our charitable efforts in the months to come.

It’ll now be part of the Ignite conference, started to support another group that operates within Children’s Miracle Network: Dance Marathon. DM targets U.S. college students 

There are going to be some fundraising challenges this week and we hope you’ll follow us on social media and maybe consider a donation. Trish’s page is www.extra-life.org/participant/trish and mine is www.extra-life.org/participant/sean - we appreciate any support as we play for the hospital!