Rec program eyed for underserved kids

Northstar initiative seeks equitable access to sports, activities

When Frank Núñez, who had been the athletic director at Yuma High School, learned that 800 players ages 5-12 had signed up for the Yuma Boys Baseball League, he wondered how many lived in poverty areas.

He told George Owens, league commissioner, that if the list included more than 12 kids who lived between 1st to 12th streets and 1st Avenue to Avenue D, he would buy him lunch.

Owens called back in half an hour and said only six kids from that area had signed up. “And he was the first one to step up and say, ‘We can do something about this,’” Núñez noted.

Since that conversation, many other community organizations and individuals have also stepped up to “do something about this.” The initiative has been named Northstar, and it seeks to guide and engage Yuma’s underserved youth through access to equitable neighborhood recreational activities.

Núñez, president of the executive board, and Terry Lowe, vice president, presented the program to the City Council during a Nov. 6 work session.

Núñez noted that children in poverty areas have “harder” access to extracurricular activities due to fees. He pointed out that early access leads to more opportunities for college and career success.

“We also know that early access to extracurriculars has a tremendous effect on a young person. They learn a tremendous amount of skills, including teamwork, how to own a mistake, how to set goals,” he said.

Extracurricular activities also allow kids to explore a wide variety of activities “to find their passion in life.”

Núñez described his own experience, noting that baseball led him to college. “What really hit me hard … I had the same background, but I grew up in a differ-

ent time, and for me that upward mobility was very well sponsored locally by a multitude of individuals,” he said, adding that it didn’t matter how much money his parents made.

“And so I started scratching my head, what happened? Because honestly if I had grown up now, I don’t think I could afford to play ball.”

Northstar found that the national average age for kids to join team sports is 6.8 for boys and 7.4 for girls. Núñez found that the average age for kids at his school to start playing ball was about 12 years old, almost twice the national average.

“We also know the biggest barrier both nationally and locally is household income. So if you want to get better at something, well, let’s take a look at how much your parents or how much you have access to. That shouldn’t be a constraint, that shouldn’t be a barrier,” Núñez said.

The group has focused on a couple of Yuma neighborhoods: the North End, where schools have a highpoverty level of 92 percent, and Mesa Heights, which has an 81 percent high-poverty level. In one specific school, Roosevelt Elementary, participation in before-school activities was 1 percent and in afterschool activities 8 percent, “nothing compared to some of the more affluent areas,” Núñez said.

Northstar envisions community-driven collaboration to include public, private and nonprofit groups and individuals, “all united in providing school-age youth with equitable access to healthy extracurricular activities.” Participants already include the Yuma Police Department, Juvenile Justice Center, three school districts and the city’s Housing Authority.

“We want our children to have these equitable access to extracurriculars because we know what it results in: higher educational attainment, greater future earnings, and then decreased involvement in those destructive activities that could possibly happen when we don’t have supervised activities for students to be a part of,” Núñez said.

“In addition to that, our schools really are community centers, they are community hubs, and we feel that if we start hosting more things at our schools and are school-driven, then that golden time between after school to the time parents get home we can structure that make them very accessible.”

He also noted that schools are already in the communities and kids can walk there.

The group is currently applying to become a nonprofit organization and in the process of conducting further assessments and recruitment, identifying facilities and equipment and attracting sponsorships and grants.

The next step is to implement a pilot program starting with one sport for kids in fourth through seventh grades. The group has chosen swim because Roosevelt School is across from Marcus Pool and within walking distance from at least three other schools.

However, Northstar hopes to eventually broaden the program to include other activities, such as Lego robotics, dance, music and the arts to allow kids to find their “passion.”

“We’re not just looking at athletics, we’re also looking at the arts. We feel any worthy activity that gets a child to say, ‘I want to commit to this school, I want to work towards that goal, I need to get better,’ that’s a goal we want to support. And if a kid’s passion is in engineering, we’re looking to support those experiences,” Núñez said.

Mayor Doug Nicholls said he was “pretty excited” when he first heard about he program, especially because “it came from the community” and the list of those supporting the effort “is pretty wide ranging.” He also liked that Northstar is using existing organizations, not creating new teams or segregating kids.

“I’m looking forward to seeing how this program proceeds and how we can help support the program. Myself, I’ve seen the different factors in life that put you in the path to success as a growing and maturing child that really maybe aren’t apparent. Sports might not be the first thing you think about when you think about going to college, however, as you’ve demonstrated, that’s definitely part of the activities for a well rounded student. It opens up eyes, and it opens up doors,” Nicholls said.

Council members Mike Shelton, Karen Watts and Jacob Miller also expressed their support. “This is an amazing thing for our community and it’s very well thought out,” Miller said, noting that some kids “take it for granted that they’re able to do those things, when they’re so many kids with our community, right around where we’re sitting today, that don’t have that opportunity.”

Lowe noted that grant funding exists for these programs. “There’s all kinds of money out there. That doesn’t mean we can get it all but getting ourselves positioned so that we can go for it is really an important step.”

Nicholls said he was willing to bet that local companies would also be willing to support the effort.