The Helena Family YMCA was chartered in 1889, making it the oldest YMCA in Montana, according to Helena history website Helena As She Was. After more than a century in the city, the Y has touched a lot of lives, but it needs community support to continue.
One of the lives touched is Ruthie Hill’s; her doctors told her to try pickleball to help her recover from a brain injury.
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“The recovery was hard, but the pickleball is what actually made it fun,” Hill said. “My OT, PT were telling me, ‘you’ll do therapy the rest of your life, but you need to find therapy you enjoy.’”
Hill went from learning to talk again, to now playing pickleball at the Helena Family YMCA at least twice a wee, and doing fitness classes.
“It’s community to me, and that’s why I’ll keep coming back,” she said.
The Y has more to offer than pickleball and classes.
“We’ve been running kids sports programs for many, many decades,” Helena YMCA chief volunteer officer and board of directors president Brad Brown said. “Our soccer and basketball programs are usually the start for most kids in the community.”
Over the past year, Brown said more than 130 kids have learned to swim at the Y, and more than 70 families have used the Y’s after school care programs.
Hill’s involvement with the Y started with the after school programs. She moved to Helena in 2002 and needed after school care for her son, that’s when she found the Y.
“It was just such a blessing for me being a working mom,” Hill said.
But without support from the community, the future of the Helena YMCA is in question.
“Unfortunately, it’s a pretty bleak picture,” Brown said. “We want to keep the doors open, but in all honesty, if we can’t get the funding that we need from the community, doomsday scenario is that we have to close our doors.”
The Y has been struggling with revenue since the pandemic and through recent turnover in the CEO position, and it is currently running a deficit. Brown said the current revenue stream has not been able to keep up with expenses like scholarships and financial aid, something that is central to the Y as an organization.
“It’s a major tenet of our mission,” Brown said. “We do not turn away anybody who does not have the ability to pay for our programs.”
That includes youth sports programs, summer camp, after school care and more. Over the past three years, Brown said the Y has provided more than $265,000 in scholarships. The money for scholarships is now gone.
“We are really at an extreme need for funding at this time,” Brown said,
The Y’s annual campaign will kick off in mid-January, but they accept donations year-round.
As Hill will tell you, the Y is called a family Y for a reason.
“We’ll welcome you in,” Hill said. “There’s always room for one more!”
For many local athletes, the developmental basketball leagues offered by the Helena YMCA were pivotal in their basketball journeys. And as the Helena Y asks for community support to remain open, MTN spoke with seven Capital High School varsity basketball players to learn how playing “Y-Ball” impacted them.
One of the first things mentioned by each Bruin senior was the social aspect of playing Y-Ball as a kid.
“Like, doing something as a little kid, like being able to just play sports and be like in that social kind of aspect,” Capital girls guard/forward Cailin Mohar said, “I think was my favorite part as for what I remember. I just remember liking to go hang out with people.”
“The thing I learned is that it’s a fun team sport,” Capital boys forward Will Spotorno said. “It’s great. It’s a great way to make friends. [It’s a] great way to have fun with other people and get out a little bit.”
And now that these former Y-Ballers have grown up to be varsity basketball players, they said they appreciate the perspective it’s given them.
“I just like looking around, looking at [head coach] Reyant’s kids that play Y now, like remembering how I used to be them,” said Capital girls center Ali Miller. “And then now getting to, like, coach kids. Y’know, seeing them.”
“Well, it was really cool back then to see how skillful all the high school players were,” said Capital boys center Brett Buehler. “And now that I’m in that position, it’s cool to work with kids and show them what I know.”
And many of the Bruin seniors said they wouldn’t be playing on the varsity team today if it hadn’t been for their Y-Ball roots.
“I think it’s really important because without it I wouldn’t have ended up in basketball at all,” said Capital girls guard/center Chloe LaFromboise. “Like, without my family ever playing in anything, I couldn’t see myself playing at all.”
“I don’t think so, no,” Capital boys guard Joey Mergenthaler said. “Just like the bonding and everything – it’s definitely changed the person of who I am. That’s for sure.”
But maybe most telling, many of those relationships that started in Y-Ball have carried through to today.
“Chloe LaFromboise was on my YMCA team when I was super young,” Capital girls guard/forward Tatum Campbell remembered. “My dad coached it. We still look at the pictures all the time of our team photos. Cailin Mohar as well, we used to play against each other in the YMCA.”
