Week Two!

This week was the first full week for me at the Hyde Park YMCA. After last week's success, I was eager to get back to the Y. Aubrey and I set expectations for the week in regards to what we wanted to accomplish.

Our first priority was running the teen center on Monday. Our supervisor, Reggie, has Mondays off, so we were left with the responsbility of coming up with fun things for the kids to do. We introduce the teens to a few new games that they have never played before. At first, like any normal teenager, they were extremely relunctant to join or even hear the instructions for the game. But, once we started playing they actually got into it. One of the teens told us after we finished playing that the game was "actually cool" which is by far the highlight of my week. Actually engaging these teens and getting them excited about something other than basketball was awesome.

Another exciting part of the week was Aubrey's idea of running a big dodgeball tournament to promote community involvement in the Y. We decided on dodgeball because it is something that a family could play together. Creating a large tournament would promote health and competition. Recruiting funders to help with the tournament would allow the Y and companies to begin partnerships. We also came up with the idea of running cirriculum when the teams are resting. We are planning on meeting with local principals or outreach coordinators in attempts to determine which issues are most prevelant in middle school youth. With this information we can decide which Sport in Society or partners programming we can use in Hyde Park and specifically at the dodgeball tournament. We spoke to our supervisor about it and he loves the idea. Bonus points for Aubrey!

I am really looking forward to continuing to come to the Y each week and create better relationships with the kids. They have already begun to trust us and are opening up more and more. I think it will be extremely important for us to get close to the kids that come to the Y daily so that we can better understand how to get other kids to come. Because it is such a new program here, we need to start at the base and recruit and then facilitate. Only time will tell how effective we will be here.

More to come next week!