Author: Sarah Durham

The exterior walls are up, the windows are roughed in and the shingles are going on the roof of the new Boys and Girls Club next to Park Orchard Elementary. The new club is still under construction, so it will be business as usual at the current location, 410 W. Third Ave., when school opens this week. All Moses Lake elementary schools open Wednesday. Executive Director Brant Mayo said there’s no bus transportation to the club the first three days of school. “Parents have to get (their children) here and pick them up,” he said. School bus transportation will begin Sept. 2. Mayo said contractors haven’t given him a firm completion date. At the building site, the exterior framing is completed and the shell has been covered with a wood underlayer. The roof is on, with the tarpaper underlayer being installed. The windows have been framed out but not installed. Interior walls have been framed and plumbing work is underway.

There’s still to work to be done – the interior needs drywall and the exterior needs siding. There’s still electrical and lighting, painting and flooring, tables, chairs, storage for equipment and supplies. Mayo said most of the equipment going into the new building will be new too, and the bigger space should attract more kids. The staff probably will be expanded to accommodate more kids and more space. And that space will be a lot bigger, about 10,700 square feet or almost twice the size of the existing space, Mayo said. The new clubhouse will have a learning center for the homework program, an art and crafts room, a game room (activity center), a teen center targeted at middle school students and a small kitchen. A meeting room will be available for community rental.

The Boys and Girls Club is partnering with the Moses Lake School District, so the club kids will have access to the playground, gym, computer lab and play fields at Park Orchard, Mayo said in an earlier interview. Once a moving date is set, Boys and Girls Club officials will announce a training and moving schedule, Mayo said.

The Boys and Girls Club will continue its emphasis on providing physical fitness opportunities for the youth of Coupeville by sponsoring a flag football league this fall. The four-week activity will run Sept. 18 to Oct. 11 with the help of volunteers from the Coupeville High School football team and coaching staff. “We will have a weekly practice/clinic each Thursday night starting Sept. 18,” said Unit Director Jamie Scharich. The kids will be divided into two divisions: one for third and fourth graders and the other for fifth and sixth graders. Games will be played on Saturday afternoons to avoid conflicts with morning soccer matches.

In addition to the flag football program, the club will continue to run youth basketball this winter. Other physical activities are sprinkled consistently throughout the year. “There is so much research out there that supports the relationship between physical play and learning,” Scharich said. “I also know that it is through physical play that we can help kids learn life lessons: winning and losing gracefully, sportsmanship, endurance and perseverance.” Among the activities this summer were a Flag Football Day, an Olympic Day, a week-long unit on music and movement and a weekly dose of Triple Play, which includes running, jumping and games to promote a healthy lifestyle. Read more at the Widbey Examiner. 

When Ron McHenry started at the Kennewick Boys & Girls Club in 2004, he quickly realized he had found his calling. The former high school band teacher was hired to establish a music and arts-based program from the ground up at that club. When the doors opened (just months after he began the project), just eight kids had signed up. One year later, more than 100 kids were involved in the program. “By that point I realized I had found my home,” McHenry said. In March, McHenry picked up and moved his home from Prosser and the Tri-Cities-area Boys & Girls Clubs to fill the position of executive director for the Skagit County Boys & Girls Clubs. Before moving here, McHenry served as the executive director of the Prosser Club and also had experience as vice president of finance, a position he wasn’t initially excited about, but the experience helped him move up the ladder and understand the organization’s budgets. Read more.

SEATTLE — Seattle area kids and their families, many from the Boys & Girls Club of King County, tested their IRONMAN skills today at the UnitedHealthcare IRONKIDS Seattle Fun Run at Genesee Park in south Seattle.

The kids, ages 3-15, had the opportunity to race on the same course as the IRONGIRLS athletes who will participate in Seattle IRONGIRLS Triathlon, which begins on Sunday. The one-mile fun run is for “triathletes to be” and aims to help stem the rising tide of childhood obesity through exercise and healthy lifestyles.

UnitedHealthcare mascot Dr. Health E. Hound kicked-off the one-mile race, joining participating IRONKIDS in warm-up exercises and cheering on the runners as they crossed the finish line. Read more.

What do Denzel Washington and Thurston County’s Terrance Gardenhigh have in common? Although they share an uncanny ability to entertain, that’s not it. And despite their rugged good looks, that isn’t it, either. What they share is something infinitely more important when it comes to determining future success: their common roots in the Boys and Girls Club. While Mr. Washington has since flourished into a tree of success, Mr. Gardenhigh is still a seedling.

Terrance is a 7 year-old South Bay Elementary School student that regularly attends the Lacey Boys and Girls Club. He’s been going there most days since he was 5, so if you ask him, he’s an old pro. I put on a reporter’s hat and sat down with Terrance for a few minutes last week to talk with him about his experience with the club. Rumors of pizza were floating around when I arrived, so a few minutes were all I got. Imagine, a 7 year-old boy distracted by pizza.

“I like it and it’s very awesome, but it’s not the best place in the world.” I was waiting for some less-than-desirable juicy detail about this upstanding organization to come spouting from the mouth of this babe. But alas, I would have to wait some more. “Charlie’s Safari would be better.” He rolled his brown eyes with a smirk plastered on his face, knowing how well he was playing this old fiddle.

“They don’t teach me to raise my hand or treat others with respect here.” Again, I anxiously awaited the rest of the story. “They make me do those things, but they don’t teach me since I already knew that stuff.” I should have known. Read more.

They spent the week learning about space and rockets — and it paid off with a bang. Or, really, a blast. Kids from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Benton and Franklin Counties’ Music & Arts Center fashioned two-liter plastic bottles into sleek space craft, complete with cardboard wings held down by duct tape, and then launched them with help from water, a bicycle pump and simple physics. Jadehn Johnson’s handmade rocket “went high and then flew that direction,” the 13-year-old said last week, pointing toward a fence at Keewaydin Park in Kennewick, a few minutes after blast off.

Jadehn has spent the summer participating in activities at the Music & Arts Center, from negotiating a “laser” obstacle course — the lasers were actually strings — during a week with a spy theme, to creating “messy art.” That activity, said Malaya Marvin, 11, “is kind of self-explanatory.” Malaya, Jadehn and other club kids spoke enthusiastically about the time they’ve had at the Music & Arts Center. That’s a specialty of the club — providing learning and enrichment opportunities in a way that, to kids, just seems like fun. Read more.