10/04/2026
Today was the Al Thompson Softball Tournament, with every penny raised going directly to support Al Thompson, a fellow firefighter who is courageously battling cancer. ❤️🩹
About a week ago, Toisnot Fire & Rescue and the Toisnot Fire & Rescue Ladies decided to jump on board and show our support. At first, we weren’t even sure we could put together a team of 10 players. Somehow, we ended up with 14 players ready to step onto the field! 🥎
The catch? Most of us hadn’t played softball in several years! We had one scrimmage game on Tuesday and a private practice on Thursday, where we worked on batting, running the bases, and trying to remember what in the world we were doing! 😂 Needless to say, we were going into today’s tournament pretty much blind!
We knew we might not have the experience that some of the other teams had, and we knew winning would be a challenge. Many of those teams play regularly, while most of us hadn’t touched a softball in years. But honestly, winning was never our main goal.
Our goal was to show up, support Al, have fun, and be part of something bigger than ourselves — and that’s exactly what we did. ❤️
We may not have taken home the win, but we had an absolute blast! We laughed, joked, cheered each other on, and met some truly incredible people throughout the day. Everyone we encountered was incredibly kind and supportive.
Even after our team was eliminated, we stayed around to watch and cheer on the other teams until the rain eventually shut things down. 🌧️
And apparently, we may not be done yet! Several departments have already talked about getting together for some friendly scrimmage games just for fun. After the week we’ve had, we’re definitely ready for it! 😂🥎
We are incredibly proud that we had the opportunity to be part of such a meaningful event and to stand beside Al and his family during this fight.
We showed up. We played our hearts out. We had a whole lot of fun. And most importantly, we did it for Al. ❤️💪