April 2013
Progress is being
made at the school and in developing baseball in Uganda. The Allen VR
Stanley Secondary School of Math and Science for the Athletically
Talented has now finished its' ninth week of operation. The 25 boys and
25 girls are developing academically and athletically. Classes are
running longer than the anticipated schedule as they now start at 7AM
and end at 12:30PM Monday thru Friday. So far, the boys have played
about 50 baseball games and 35 soccer games. The girls have played the
same number of soccer games and about 50 softball games. The time
playing games is less than the time they spend on practice and drills
for both sports.
On March 30, the
school was invited to participate in a race in Kampala. The race was
for 14 years of age and under. We intended to enter 5 boys and 5 girls,
but only 3 girls wished to run. A bus brought the entire school to
Kampala to support the runners. Our runners finished First, Second and
Third. Our goal is to be the best and this shows that we are getting
there.
Three weeks ago, we
played a school in soccer, in Uganda it is called football. We only won
by 1-0. We played the same school two weeks later and dominated the
game, but only won 3-0. If we play them again, our goal is to win 6-0.
Remember, none of these boys were soccer players before they came
to this school.
Academically, we are
working on getting each student a tablet where every book they need over
the next six years in science, math, history and literature can be
stored on the tablet and read at any time. Our problem is getting
tablets into Africa. Because of the technology, Amazon and Apple will
not talk to us because we want to ship a tablet for each student to
Africa. The way they make money here in the U.S. evidently does not
work in Africa and thus are not interested in us purchasing 50 tablets
each year. We will solve this problem, and already have the books we
need available to us through the CK12 Foundation.
Starting May 10, the
Little League National Tournament will be held for boys 11-12 years of
age. We believe that we have an excellent chance of winning as the team
now has three pitchers that throw at 70 miles per hour and three others
that throw in the mid 60s. We are using 4 pitchers every game we play
and thus, since we play 6 games per week, three on weekends, we use 12
pitchers every weekend. Unfortunately, the championship will be decided
by one game to be played the morning of May 14. Following the boys, the
girls 11-12 will be playing their tournament starting the morning of May
15. We have 8 girl teams coming to play for the title. Their
championship will be played on the 19th, followed by the boys 13-14 year
old boys. Our girl teams are just learning the game and we are looking
to develop at least 3 or more windmill pitchers that can throw strikes.
Once again, none of the girls played the game before coming to the
complex. While we will send the boys team to Kutno, Poland in July, we
do not have the money for the girls to travel to Italy. If Little
League moves the girls tournament to Poland, we will definitely send a
team next year. The problem with Italy, we have to pay for our own
hotel rooms, food and bus to take us to the field to play one game per
day for four days. There is no opportunity to practice at fielding or
hitting, other than to just play one game per day and sit in the hotel
rooms the rest of the days. It is totally different in Poland.
In other baseball
developments, we have clarified the situation with the government sports
schools. The government is evidently not going to supply money for the
sport schools to purchase equipment. Thus we have entered into an
agreement with the Uganda Sports Commissioner that we will make every
effort to equip 5 secondary schools with equipment to have each
school get at least 4 teams at the S1 and S2 level playing, 4 more teams
at the S3 and S4 level playing in a year or two, and 4 more teams at the
S5 and S6 level playing, They will become members of Little League and
the complex will host annual championship tournaments every May for boys
and girls. The Sports Commissioner will send at least 4 coaches from
each of the schools to the complex to be trained in baseball playing,
coaching and umpiring. The winners of the tournaments will be eligible
to move on to the Little League Regional Tournaments currently being
played in Europe. The Commissioner believes he will be able to
get corporate sponsors to cover the cost to get them to Europe. All
these schools will be fed by existing Little League programs where there
are already trained coaches running the programs. Each of these schools
will also have Peace Corps Volunteers able to oversee their programs and
assist in running them. The goal is to produce many excellent baseball
and softball players to export to the U.S. and other countries.
The Japanese have
donated a significant amount of money to build a very nice full size
baseball facility just north of Kampala. It should be finished in less
than a year. This will make at least 4 baseball fields with grass
around the country in addition to the five we currently have at the
Little League complex. Three of these four are Little League fields,
all built in the last 12 months.
While the visitors
that we thought were coming in March did not come for various reasons,
we now expect a significant number of visitors to be coming in May.
People from Indiana in regard to our school program are now planning on
coming late in May. They may number as many as 8 to 10 people. Ms.
Wendy Lewis, of Major League Baseball, will now plan on coming in
January of next year. We have several other people coming over the
summer who will be joining the baseball program in Lira and in
other parts of Uganda. It has been indicated to us several weeks ago
that Dan Velte of Little League International may be traveling to Uganda
to see our tournaments. We do know that we expect at least 4 or more
umpires from the Little League World Series Umpire Alumni Association to
be joining us to umpire our three tournaments this May.
