For my community service I decided to work with my local basketball program coaching kindergarten through 12th grade. I chose to do this project because I believe that sports is a great outlet for kids and being involved in something positive is important. In Clovis, we have lots of kids that drop out, don’t care about school, involved in drugs, and many more negative things. Sports are a positive activity to get into and when you start kids young playing sports, the more likely they are to stay in sports through middle school and high school. This is my second year volunteering to help the basketball program, and I have developed relationships with several of the kids. It’s a nice feeling to know these kids look up to you and to be someone they can go to when they have a problem or every need anything. I’ve always wanted to be a positive role model for kids younger than me because I know that some kids don’t have good home lives, some of them don’t know when their next meal is going to be, some of them don’t have someone to care about them and love them. I want to be that person for them, I want them to have fun with me, learn the things I am teaching them because you can teach kids a lot of life skills in sports. Teaching people how to be dependent, how to work in a team, how to work hard, how to face adversity. This happens every single day in life and how you approach life and the difficulties in it tells a lot about a person. I think sports and school go hand and hand, I used many of the skills I learned in summer school to help be a better coach and a better mentor. I also used the things I learned in basketball to help me become a better teacher. I think the way kids are taught is so important, giving a child an education will take them a long way, but teaching them life skills and loving them every step of the way can change a kids life!
