Fundraising Tourney Kicks Off In Nats Stadium

At this time last year, a few dozen teams from across the D.C. region were taking to fields in Vienna and across Fairfax County to play in the first-ever Kyle's Kamp Wood Bat baseball tournament, in honor of Kyle Hahne, a now-8-year-old diagnosed with leukemia in the fall of 2010.

The three-day tournament for Kyle, the son of local baseball coach Rob Hahne and Madison High School teacher Kieran Hahne,  through individual and team donation and wood bat, T-shirt and food sales. Most of the teams gave a team tournament donation of anywhere between $75 to $300 in place of a tournament registration fee.

What a difference a year can make: Tonight, the tournament kicks off for its second year with more than 165 teams, several of whom will take the field at Nationals Stadium. Together, they've raised more than $380,000; The NVTBL Stars 13U, which includes players from Vienna and Tysons Corner, raised $28,835 alone for the tournament.

For a video from last year's inaugural tournament, click on the media player above.

Rob Hahne, a Centreville resident, has a long history in local baseball and little league. He has coached across Northern Virginia and the world, from McLean to Westfield's High School JV squad, and in Parma, Italy, training kids for Major League Baseball. He's also the general manager and director of Baseball Performance Training, a company based out of Chantilly.

Each game of the tournament begins with a moment of silence for pediatric cancer patients. Coaches also remind the children why they are playing whenever possible, Hahne said.

The beauty of this tournament is that players and teams throughout the area will be learning valuable life lessons while also playing ball, Hahne said.

"You now have a child with cancer," he wrote last year on the website he and his wife created for their son. "It is obviously something that nobody wants to deal with it but we really don't have much of a choice. We have to deal with it and we have to be strong for all of our children. That isn't always easy but it is a necessity."

Kyle was diagnosed with leukemia in the fall of 2010 and continues treatments. But one thing that hasn't changed for Kyle, his parents or siblings Robert and Maddie is Kyle's love for baseball. He returned to the field this April and enjoyed it, Hahne wrote on his blog.

"That is until I hit him twice while pitching to him," he wrote on the family's blog. "He was very tough ... I obviously felt very bad about it."

Friday's games at Nat's Stadium are free and open to the public. Gates open at 3 p.m. For more information, click here. To see when your team is playing, click here.