Smackover Boys & Girls Club opens, welcomes youths

Anthony Farris-King had been waiting for the day to arrive.

On Monday, Farris-King officially welcomed kids inside the Boys & Girls Club of El Dorado’s new facility in Smackover.

Farris-King, who serves as the director of the new club, was eager to get started.

“I am beyond excited,” he said before opening the doors. “Excited is not the word. If I can think of another word for excited, I would use that. It’s been a long process and it’s been a short process. We had our very first meeting back in October, here it is June, and we’re starting a brand new Club. It’s going to be great for this community. They tell me that they’ve never had anything like this before in this community.”

Opening the Club during the coronavirus pandemic is very significant to King.

“Kids have already been sitting in the house with nothing to do with parents trying to keep them safe in quarantine by all means possible, and I understand that, but you want kids to have a chance to be a kid,” he said.

“More than ever, I’m looking at it more as an escape route for the kids that are going to be here. For them just to get away from the pandemic, get away from everything they may be seeing on social media, just come and relax, be free and be a kid. It’s going to be a place for a release for some more than ever.”

There are many regulations in place in order to keep everyone safe: taking temperatures, wearing masks, maintaining groups in the room of no more than 10 kids and one staff member, limiting the number of kids to two allowed to go into the restroom at one time, sanitizing it once the kids come out of the restroom.

Farris-King added that kids will have plenty of outdoor activities with restrictions in place.

“Outdoors, it’s a little more lenient as far as the covid-19 restrictions,” he said. “To my understanding, the virus is less effective when we’re all outside, but even with that, we’ve taken an extra step. We’ve got wipes so we can wipe down the ball every chance we get. We may not be able to play basketball, but things like kickball is more spread out even though they’re touching the same ball, it’s more spread out.”

Farris-King believes the future for the new Club is a bright one.

“I’m excited about what we’re going to do here in the future. This will be a small step in what we’re wanting to do within the entire region. Once we get this up and going, people in other communities will want to have what Smackover-Norphlet has. Our ultimate goal is to bring everybody together.”