Kids winding up for baseball, softball
The shouts of “Play ball!” soon will be ringing from the fields of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Midlands.
And Sidney Good, for one, couldn’t be more excited.
“A lot of kids aren’t getting as much exercise as they should, so now they’ll be able to get all that they need,” the Hand Middle School student said of the new baseball and softball outings that will become a part of his life.
And don’t expect this youngster to watch from the sidelines.
Sidney is among hundreds of local Boys & Girls Club members who have been given a new doorway to organized sports participation.
Last week, the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation presented $15,000 to the local Boys & Girls Club, which will use it to establish a formal baseball and softball league. The gift came as part of the national foundation’s Play Ball! Tour For Kids. It’s an effort to promote baseball and softball at the local level and provide organized, safe after-school programs. Columbia marked the sixth stop on the foundation’s 25-city national tour.
The Ripken foundation targets girls and boys from 10 to 14 years old with an emphasis on those from disadvantaged circumstances. The Midlands club was selected for one of the national awards after submitting a grant application outlining its needs and showing the number of children that are served locally.
“This is going to enhance and strengthen what we’re already doing,” said James Brown, chief operations officer for the Boys & Girls Clubs.
The Boys & Girls Clubs have long offered such structured programs as after-school homework help, tutoring, computer classes and one-on-one mentoring. But Brown noted that, in the past, much of the recreational activity at the local clubs has consisted of “free play.”
While the Boys & Girls Clubs had teamed with a teen basketball league at Fort Jackson recently, the new league will mark the agency’s first formal sports program of its own.
Baseball and softball activities will be incorporated in the sports, fitness and recreation programs at designated clubs. In addition to the physical instruction, it also will emphasize fitness, positive use of leisure time, skills for stress management, and other social skills such as conflict resolution and cooperation.
Brown said initially there will be six leagues each at the Ben Arnold club and Lorick Park club, with additional leagues eventually added at other club sites. About 1,100 youngsters are expected to be involved in the program in the first year.
Angel Natal of the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation said the hope is that the nationwide grants will create programs that will help provide more structured activities for young people.
“We’re trying to promote that structured lifestyle,” Natal said. “It’s the very concept of relying on someone and having them rely on you.”
After last week’s check presentation, Natal and other representatives from the Ripken Foundation staged a mini-clinic at the Ben Arnold club, focusing on baseball fundamentals. In the coming months, the hope is for such instruction to be carried on by local volunteers.
Brown said the Boys & Girls Clubs will be recruiting volunteer coaches from area colleges, beginning with the University of South Carolina.
One eager player those coaches will find awaiting them is Sidney Good, who can’t wait for the first pitch.
The seventh-grader has been a regular on the basketball courts during his four years with the Ben Arnold Boys & Girls Club, but he said baseball will provide a welcome new outlet for him and his friends.
“I love baseball,” he said. “I think it’s going to mean a lot. A lot of us don’t get to play on a ball field in our community. But finally we’ll have one where I can come and play, and I won’t have to get my mom to come all the way across town to pick me up.”