March 2020:

A number of significant things have happened in the past couple of weeks. I represented Uganda at the Europe/Africa Little League District Administrators meeting which was held in Warsaw, Poland on February 20 and 21. At the meeting, which was attended by most European Countries, but only Uganda and one other African Country, I was told that Little League International had no intention of breaking Africa away from Europe at any time in the near future. In the conversation with the Little League International Representative, it was mentioned that Uganda should host an All Africa tournament with the winner then traveling to Europe to play in the Europe/Africa tournament. I then asked who would pay the $35,000 for that teams travel to Poland for that tournament. I was told they would have to. It is so nice that only an African Little League team is asked to pay that amount of money to play in a tournament that might get them to the World Series. No other Little League team in the world is asked to pay that amount of money to play in the Little League tournaments. Why not just bring the team representing the second most populous continent in the world directly to Williamsport?

In any event, Uganda has decided to host a boys and then a girls All Africa tournament in May of 2021 at the Uganda Little League Complex. Uganda will cover food and housing at no cost to the visiting teams. Uganda will also offer to meet the teams at the Entebbe Airport and bring them to the complex at no charge. Each team will obtain their visa to Uganda, if needed, at the Entebbe airport upon arrival. These facilities do not exist in Europe, except at Kutno, while Netherlands and Italy host little League tournaments where the teams pay for their own housing and food and transport to the fields from their hotels.. Each African tournament winner will have the option to travel either to Poland at the cost of about $35,000 pee team with the problem of finding a Polish Embassy in Africa that will give them a visa to Poland upon them showing that they have paid for the airline tickets, have paid for medical insurance in Poland and have proven to the Polish Embassy that they have several hundred thousand Euros that they might need to cover their costs in Europe. Only them might they get the visa to Poland. Thanks Little League. Why don't they just send the team directly to Williamsport, or do they want to keep Africans away from Williamsport?

The AVRS school continues to move ahead with this years schedule. Our annual Uganda Little League tournament will be held starting on May 6 for the boys and May 11 for the girls. The boys will be expected to arrive at the complex on May 5 and be leaving on the afternoon of May 10. On that afternoon, the girls will be expected to arrive to begin play on May 11 with their championship game held the morning of May 15. Both tournaments are expected to have eight teams playing in a double elimination tournament with a single championship game. In 2021, both these tournament will be followed by their respective All African tournaments.

The Dodgers are continuing to make progress. At the moment, there are now four coaches staying at the complex training the students athletically and academically in trying to vastly improve their SAT results. This is important as both we and Dodgers expect the students to obtain scholarships to American Colleges and Universities to play sports, but to also have good academics. So far, our first student is here in the U.S to play softball and soccer. Unfortunately, her softball season ended as the games were just about to begin. In regard to softball, as the Dodgers used to say when they were in Brooklyn," Wait Until Next Year". In the meantime, the soccer coach is eager to have her play with the soccer team starting in August. She is disappointed at the moment, but is eager to start play on the soccer fields. meanwhile, she doing well academically while majoring in Computer Science.