January 2019:

The new year is going to start out with major changes.  The first item of business is the three National Championship tournaments that will be held at the Little League Complex starting on January 4. This year, for the first time, a National Championship tournament will be held for the S4-S6 boys. The three tournaments will start off with the girls second annual S1-S6 softball tournament. The next tournament will be the boys third annual S1- S3 tournament followed by the first annual S4-S6 boys tournament. During a meeting in early November, the Minister of Sports agreed that these tournaments must be played every year and the Ministry of Education and Sports will support the government schools financially in making these tournaments part of Ugandan Sports program. In turn, the Little League Complex has agreed to offer the winning coaches prize money for winning, along with some cash for the second team coach. We want these teams to be the best eight teams at each level in Uganda, and we want many teams playing for the championships each year. Once again, the Little League complex will continue to host the eight teams playing in each five day tournament at no cost to any team qualifying for the tournaments. They just need to get to the complex, which is where the Ugandan government comes in with its support.

On January 7, the first of the LA Dodger coaches arrives in Uganda to come and live at the AVRS school. He will be making sure the operation is up and running for when the other two LA Dodger coaches arrive on January 15/ These three coaches will be living at the complex while working out their program to train the students and the coaches with the most advance techniques to produce truly highly skilled players and coaches both for the boys, and the girls playing softball. A lot of things are changing from the use of videos, batting cages, pitching mounds, and even the nutrition of the students. The goal is to develop the native talents in the players that U.S. colleges will want to recruit to give them winning teams on the intercollegiate levels in the U.S. while letting the students get an excellent education in the math and sciences at these American Institutions. Along those lines, all three of these coaches were here for a week in late December to help select the incoming class of S1 students.

Along those lines, the Dodgers want to assist us in improve the facilities at the complex. New batting cages and pitching facilities are being put up, along with another 20 by 40 foot building. Two pitching machines are coming for the two new batting cages. These are included in a number of other items that will identify the AVRS school as a LA Dodger facility in the eyes of the students. What is so special is that the AVRS school will probably be the only secondary school in the world with Professional Baseball coaches in residence to be developing the skills of students who's ages rain from 10 years of age to 16. While baseball is not the only sport at the complex, every student will still be required to play competitive soccer, track and basketball while they are at the school The key difference at the AVRS school is that the students will have the best facilities, equipment, coaching and opportunities of getting an education of any school in the World.

Along those lines, we are extremely happy to announce that the Allen VR Stanley Pavilion is now finished and ready for use. It is expected that the official ribbon cutting will be taking place sometime in early March, which should be quite an event. We are told that there is no other facility like this one anywhere in East Africa at the current time. It will be used for basketball, volley ball, and possibly other events, maybe even indoor soccer.

Our next project is to finally begin to construct a 400 meter, eight lane International Level track equipped with electronic timing. I had paid a visit to the Hillsdale College in Michigan last December and meet with a number of officials. One was the track coach for the college. He was very impressed with some our running times for 60 yards by both our boys and girls. Hillsdale was installing a new outdoor track to go along with their terrific, modern indoor facility that also had electric timing. During that discussion, I learned it was not difficult to do the electronic timing. He promised at that time, when he was done, he would send me the plans for his track that we could use for ours. He also pointed out that there are currently only two types of surfaces for the track that are wanted and told me which was the newest and best. Here in the U.S., I have seen some of the new facilities over the past year, and they are all with the surface he mentioned. As I write this, he has informed me that the plans are on the way. Sometime in March, we will be looking for a Ugandan contractor to build the track. Hopefully, we will then be able to post the running times of our students obtained via electronic timing and open them up for track scholarships.

The most important item that everyone must be aware of is the following. While at Hillsdale, they were enrolling at least three Kenyan female students at the school on full scholarships every year for the past several. They would like to offer a similar program for our Ugandan students, and would be willing to do it for up to four students, boys or girls, because they know, our students are good athletes. The condition was that they needed to produce a combined English and Math SAT score of at least 1250. This is what the Kenyan program is doing. Unfortunately, at this time, the AVRS school has only gotten at student who scored 1050. We have a long way to go to get to 1250 or above, but the teachers and head master and everyone involved knows that we must change our ways to start producing these student/athletes. I firmly believe that if we can get our students over 1250, we can get them into the best Universities and colleges in the U.S. on full scholarships. We need to produce the athletes who are top level students. We have set about to make that happen.

 

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.