July 16th through the 22nd is National Youth Sports Week.
Greene County Youth Athletic Association encompasses several youth sports including: football, basketball, baseball, softball and most recently soccer. They cater to third through sixth graders. GCYAA President Jamie Daubendiek says while kids naturally will be competitive in sports, they also want to teach them fundamentals of life as well.
“There’s so many life lessons you can learn throughout sports with teamwork, hard work, dedication, commitment, (and) loyalty, which is really hard to think about. What really prepares you for those jobs and careers and to me sports is a huge piece of that. Because you have got to get along with other people, you’ve got to work together as a team, and then you have competition.”
Daubendiek points out that GCYAA has also taken steps to improve overall safety in their youth sports programs, especially for football with impact concussion testing.
“Everybody takes a baseline test, when they don’t have a concussion, and if somehow they think they get a concussion then they take this test and it’ll show the levels. If they are above it, where it kind of goes into concussion protocol, or if they’re back to normal then they can go on. So that’s been very successful in the football side of things, but it’s also been used in other sports as well.”
He adds that they also teach how to tackle and block in football without endangering the kids from getting a concussion and they’ve replaced older helmets with newer ones that have the latest cushion technology to soften blows to the head. If anyone is interested in learning more about GCYAA contact them at 386-3070 or email at gcyaa1@gmail.com, or on Facebook at facebook.com/gcyaa.