You may have heard a women's professional fast-pitch softball team from Canada is calling Rent One Park in Marion home this summer.
The team called the Canadian Wild of Southern Illinois is made up of players from the Canadian National Team. They're using the experience to prepare for the 2020 Olympics.
SIU Saluki head softball coach Kerri Blaylock talked about the team during a presentation today (Wed) at the Southern Illinois Learning in Retirement meeting in Carbondale.
She says one of the benefits of having the team here is it could help boost enrollment at the University.
"You are going to have young females from, it could be Evansville, Cape Girardeau, Paducah, St. Louis coming to watch this and be a stone's throw away from our beautiful campus."
Blaylock says SIU-C has a table set up with admissions information at the Wild's home games in Marion.
She says the team's presence is bringing some much needed revenue into SIU-C.
"You have a housing complex at Wall and Grand that traditionally sits empty over the summer and now you have money pumped into SIU Housing because they're there. Each of them have a Rec Center pass...money for the Rec Center."
The team's schedule is available here.
