September 2018

The last semester of the AVRS school 2018 has now begun. The year 2019 may see many changes at the school as we are working with the Los Angles Dodgers and the Ugandan Government on vastly improving both the athletics and the academics for the new and future years at the school.

Baseball:

As indicated earlier, we do expect to actively be involved with Little League Baseball in 2019, and we do anticipate sending another team to participate in the Europe/Africa 12 and under tournament in Poland for boys and girls this coming July. In order to do that, we expect the school to host the Ugandan Little League tournament for both these programs early in May. The AVRS school is no longer a chartered Little League member as that would prevent the tournament it hosts to be recognized as a legal Little League Tournament, or so we have been informed by Little League International. That results from Little League International telling us in early 2016 that the AVRS school is not allowed to participate in tournaments, and thus, if we host any, those tournaments are not recognized and any participant is not allowed to go to play in the Regional. Where these special Ugandan Little League rules came, we do not know, but we will live with them for now. The AVRS school is banned from Little League play because the AVRS school recruits players from all of Uganda, so we have been told ever since we won the boys and girls tournaments in Poland in 2015. We have our own opinion of this.

We have had a very successful experience with the Major League RBI program this past summer. As was previously mentioned, the AVRS school did participate in the June qualifying tournament held in Vero Beach Florida. The Boys 18 and under and the girls softball team did not win their tournaments, but the boys 15 and under did win theirs, and as a result traveled to Minneapolis during the first week of August. They played, won one game and wound up losing three. The pitching was fair, but the fielding and hitting left a lot to be desired in the three games they lost. Inconsistency was a big problem. But they have learned a lot about winning and what needs to be done to become effective. All the teams left a huge impression about the talent in Uganda. As a result, one of the players from the senior team was invited to travel with the Junior team so more scouts could look at him in more depth during the workout day that was held in the middle of the August tournaments. He has impressed enough people so that he is now coming to the U.S. the first two weeks of October to the elite baseball program being held in Phoenix. I also believe their performances led to the Los Angles Dodgers to get involved with the AVRS school to assist the school in developing more players, and also to assist in expanding the Ugandan Secondary School Baseball program.

A major outcome of our trips to the U.S. this summer has been the education that our Best Ugandan Baseball players received from seeing the baseball talent in the U.S. and how they compare and play. When you have never lost a game in Uganda and find that there are a lot of good players in the rest of the world who can beat you, it means you now have to go back and work on getting better. But, they have also seen that they have as much as, or even possibly more basic talent than good U.S. players, which give everyone hope for the future.

School:
We are now working with the Ugandan UN Ambassador about the curriculum at the AVRS school. It is his opinion that we need to move away from the basic Ugandan Curriculum and more towards an American Curriculum, especially if we are looking to place a number of our students in U.S. Colleges and Universities. I have always felt that way, and tried to do that over our first four years. But to comply with Ugandan rules, and parent objections, we switched to the Ugandan Curriculum two years ago. Now with his help, and his assistance with the Ugandan Ministry of Education and Sports, we believe it now may be possible. We are beginning to work on it and we may be able to phase it in starting in early 2019. We are going to try and see if it can be done.
 

The Trenton Thunder supplied the hats and shirts that the team wore in Poland.  The Trenton team was rooting for them to win so that they could come to the U.S. and visit the Trenton stadium and be introduced to the media and the crowd at a Trenton Thunder ball game.   Uganda would have been the first African Little League team to make it to the Little League World Series in its almost 80 year history.