Author: Ben Kopnick

The familiar sounds of the ballfield were in the air on a late August morning. Ping! The metal bat meets the ball. Smack! The ball hits the back of the leather glove. “One out,” one of the players says. The rhythms of the game were instantly recognizable to the players on the field. After all, most of them have been playing some form of it for decades. The two teams on the field were the Yankees and the Red Sox. But this wasn’t Yankee Stadium — this was Eden Prairie’s Miller Park, playing host to West Metro Senior Softball (WMSS).…

It’s no secret that children are influenced by their environment, learning from the people, places, and things around them. For Eden Prairie resident Amalia Moreno-Damgaard, that meant absorbing the lessons taught by family and food in her native Guatemala. “I call my grandmother on my mother’s side my north star,” said Moreno-Damgaard. After her parents’ divorce, she lived with her grandmother in a small town in southeastern Guatemala from age 5 to 9. There, Moreno-Damgaard watched (and sometimes helped) her grandmother run her variety store that sold everything from salt and beans to pyrotechnics for celebrations and gear for horses.…

For sculptor Michael Finch, it started with duct tape. About a decade ago, it was trendy to make wallets and purses out of duct tape. But, while others were caught up in the craze of making smaller things out of the versatile adhesive, the then 10-year-old Finch saw something else, something bigger. “I saw it and I’m like, ‘hmmm,’ I wonder what giant things I can make out of this material,” Finch said. Now 20, Finch has indeed gone bigger. He’s graduated from duct tape to steel and regularly makes sculptures that are several feet tall. Finch currently has a…

For many people, pets are a constant in a life full of change. Our pets are around as we grow from children to adults, graduate, get jobs, get married, and have children of our own. Animals give us stability, joy, humor, loyalty, and much more. It only makes sense, then, that they are there for us as we near the end of our lives. Minneapolis-based Grace Hospice, which serves the seven-county metro area, including Eden Prairie, uses volunteer teams — one human and one pet — to bring comfort to those receiving hospice care. To observe a pet visiting a…

Eden Prairie’s William Sawalich moved forward in his auto racing career earlier this month, making his debut in the ARCA (Automobile Racing Club of America) Menards Series, which can serve as a feeder system for NASCAR, the country’s top stock car racing series. A lot went well, even if the end result wasn’t what he wanted. Sawalich, 16, had the fastest time in the qualifying runs for the ARCA Menards Series West General Tire 150 on March 10 in Phoenix. That meant he got to start the race at the front of the field. He said he had a good…

When you grow up going to your parents’ business meetings, you’re going to pick up a few things. In the case of Eden Prairie native Brandon Leon Richardson Hill, that meant learning a lot about the grocery industry. For Hill, those seeds, planted in childhood, were a big part of helping him get to where he is today — co-founder and CEO of Vori, a company that he hopes will transform the business of how we get our food. Hill, 29, who started Vori alongside Tremaine Kirkman and Robert Pinkerton in 2019, knew there was a problem in the grocery business.…

For seven years, Eden Prairie native William Sawalich has been darting around racetracks all over the country, driving cars that routinely travel at triple-digit speeds. He just became eligible for his Minnesota driver’s license in October. The 16-year-old race car driver had a strong 2022 season, registering 15 wins across various racing series. Those accomplishments helped him land a three-year deal with Joe Gibbs Racing, one of the most successful racing teams in the NASCAR Cup Series, the highest level of stock car racing. “I’m really excited to sign with them,” Sawalich said during a recent phone interview. “It’s kind…

With more than a decade of experience as a professional hockey player, it stands to reason that Eden Prairie native Meaghan Pezon has seen a lot: leagues that folded, blinding snowstorms during van trips to away games, home arenas without a permanent locker room for her team. Today, her team plays in a more stable league, flies to away games, and recently moved into an arena that has a locker room it can call its own. Through it all, Pezon has played with one team, the Minnesota Whitecaps, first signing with the team in 2010. During a recent phone interview,…

It’s midday in downtown Minneapolis, and Mike Max’s curiosity is on full display. Listen to him conversing with people on the sidewalks, people he sees every day — the curiosity is there. Watch him taking in the answers as he talks with members of an organization hired by the city of Minneapolis to help curb violent crime in the area — the curiosity is there. Try to keep up with him as he strides to the next corner, to the next person, the next story — the curiosity is there. “I am really innately curious about everybody, you know,” said…

Fantasy football pioneer Paul Charchian has dealt with plenty of pressure in his professional life. As a side job, he started a magazine to fill a hole in a growing industry. Three decades later, he has to figure out how to stand out in that same industry, now saturated with competitors. Growing up in Eden Prairie, pressure involved scrounging up 25 cents. “I would walk up to Eden Prairie Center,” said Charchian, who now lives in Plymouth. “If I could find a quarter, I would walk up to Aladdin’s Castle [an arcade]. If I could just get one quarter together…