July 2015 Headlines. Stories follow:

 

● Uganda 11-12 year old boys will be returning to the Little League World Series with their first game scheduled for August 20 at noon. Strongest team Europe has ever sent to the World Series in most peoples opinion. May do some serious damage in Williamsport.

● Uganda 11-12 year old girls become the first girls team to ever make it to a Little League World Series as they beat Italy in the Championship game. Uganda coach suspended for two games when all our subs play three innings, but one does not bat because we are the home team and we do not get up in the 6th inning. Under little league rules, 5.5 innings is a complete 6 inning game. If she allowed the team to score another run, the losing team would not have gotten up in the 6th inning but been embarrassed by the score, three of our players would only play one and one half innings, but our coach would not have been suspended and possibly assaulted as happened to the boys coach in their championship game..

● Crazy things happen in all three tournaments and some of the things will lead to significant changes and one mostly certainly should.

The winning boys team romped through the 14 team tournament undefeated. Made many friends, but some unhappy losers. In Little League, they have a mercy rule which if a team is ahead by 10 or more runs, the game is over after the losing team bats four times at the 11-12 level, and 5 times at older levels. Uganda mercy ruled every team it played but one. It entered the tournament with a lot of very good pitching, speed, good hitting and excellent fielding and demonstrated that in every game but one, where the opponent had an excellent pitcher, that being Italy, which they faced in the game featuring the last two undefeated teams in the tournament with the loser having to come out of the loser bracket and beat the winner twice on the final day in order to win the tournament. Every other game ended via mercy rule after less than 4 innings. Italy removed it star pitcher with the score 0-0 after 3 innings after reaching 50 pitches to save him for the Championship game in three days. Uganda, in the fourth inning hit a two run home run and in the fifth a three run home run and won 4-0 on a no hitter. A walk being the only blemish. How does a three run home run and a two run home run total 4 you may ask, but it did because this is what happened in the 5th inning. Runners on second and third with no outs, and the batter hits it over the fence, which results in two runs and one out. It seems the runner on third base decided to wait to touch home so he could shake hands with the batter and had the runner on second touch home before him. One out for passing a runner and only two runs. The rest of the story continues as Spain beats Italy in the game to get the winner to play against Uganda. The best pitcher doesn't pitch and Uganda faces Spain for the championship. After Uganda is ahead 10 to nothing, the Spanish coach, instead of stopping at the third base coaching box heads for the Uganda dugout to assault the Uganda coach because our kids were still running and he did not like it, especially after we hit three consecutive home runs in the inning. Fortunately, the umpires stopped him and the game ended at 16-0.

The winning girls team has a related story to the winning boys. In girl's play, a pitcher can only pitch in one game per day and since there were only five countries represented, each team had to play four games in three days with the top two teams playing for the Championship on the fourth day. On the first day, Uganda played Poland and won by mercy rule where in the first inning, the umpires were using common sense umpiring to get the game over with That means the strike zone for Uganda greatly expands, and any opportunity to get an out is taken advantage of. In any event, the favorites were Czech to repeat as they were last year's winners, Italy who had won for several years before, and the Netherlands who probably have one of the best club programs in Europe. On day one, Czech had to play Italy in their morning game and the Netherlands in the afternoon game. What was probably the best pitcher in the tournament was used by them to beat Italy. Against the Netherlands, they lost by a score of 13-0 because of pitching weakness.

 

On day two, Uganda played the Netherlands in the morning and faced their best pitcher, and then played Czech in the afternoon. The score after three innings of the morning game is 9-0 in favor of Uganda. Since all our players play at least half of the game, the manager put in the three subs to play the last three innings. But now it is time to get the game over with before the score gets worse. With Uganda the home team, only 8 batters get up in the fourth and fifth innings and since we are the home team, the game ends after the top of the sixth inning. Because one of the subs would be the lead off batter in the bottom of the 6th inning that did not happen, the manager is pulled away 30 minutes before the start of the 1PM game against the Czech and never to return and Uganda is not notified that she is suspended until we ask the umpires not to start the game 10 minutes early until our coach comes back. We then find out that a guard is assigned to her to make sure she does not get within 600 feet of the playing fields for Uganda's next two games. The Czech is a well played game going into the 5th inning at 0-0. Uganda wins 2-1 in six innings, defeating the tourney's best pitcher, and goes on to win the Championship game against Italy to become the first African Girls Softball team to make it to the Softball World Series.

The faiths were against the Ugandan 13-14 year old team. Clearly the best team at the 10 team tournament, as they scored more runs than anyone, allowed fewer runs, stole many bases without anyone being thrown out and never allowing any one to steal a base and picking off two runners. Mercy ruled every team played, including the eventually winning Czech team. Why aren't they champions, because of spotty defensive play and a strange umpire call. Czech and Uganda were the last two undefeated teams in the 10 team tournament and met in an afternoon game scheduled for 1PM. The morning game went long and the ground crew was still fixing the field during what our manager thought was our infield time, as the visiting team, and thus thought he was not allowed after his normal time had expired during the field fixing. Winning 5-3 in the sixth inning, a couple of bad errors and other problems led to bases loaded and a 5-4 score with two out. A hard hit ground ball to our third baseman causes the ball to bounce off his throwing hand, which he then picks up, takes a long time to finally throw to first and by the time he does, the runner is safe and the score is tied. He now lies in pain on the grass and is medically attended to. After about 5 minutes, he sits up and tells the coach he is fine. The coach lets him stay in the game without a test throw. Needless to say, the next batter hits a routine grounder to the third baseman, who, with plenty of time makes a throw to first that should end the inning with the game tied. Unfortunately, the throw sails at least 15 feet over the first baseman's head that brings in two more runs and that is the last throw he makes the rest of tournament as he eventually winds up at the hospital and a heavily taped hand. He is our number three pitcher. We then go to the losers bracket to mercy rule Italy again and then mercy rule Czech the next morning by 10-0.

 

That forces the final game to be played for the championship that afternoon at 4PM. Once again, we are the visiting team in the afternoon. It rains from about 12;30 to about 3. All the fields are muddy and the grounds crew works to get the main field playable which is done about 3:40. As the visiting team again, we are supposed to be first for infield practice, but our other inexperience tournament coach is told by the umpire to hurry up as they want to start the game on time. He immediately pulls the team off after about 1 minute. The Czech team ignores the umpire's request and takes their normal infield practice time. Winning 2-0 in the third inning, bad plays by second base and shortstop bring the score to 2-2 with two outs and the bases loaded. This time a ground ball to the shortstops right gives him the opportunity to make a short flip to an unsuspecting third baseman who is not on the base and also drops the ball as the score goes to 3-2 against Uganda. In the top of the 6th, using our speed, we tie the score at 3-3. Then due to pitch counts Uganda is now forced to bring in our number 5 pitcher as 4 pitched the day before and 1 and 2 pitched today, and 3 is hurt. He gets the first two outs easily, but the next batter singles. He then hits the next batter and walks the following on 4 pitches. Now comes the strange umpire call. The next batter, who has already struck out twice in this game, with an 0-2 count then falls across home plate and gets hit in the upper back with a ball that was about knee high. He lies across home plate for several minutes with his head in the other batters box in obvious pain. Our pitcher wants to know how he can do that. The umpire then awards him first base to force in the go ahead run. A wild pitch follows and then a two run single and we lose 7-3.

The writer of this piece was supposed to be a coach for all three teams to assist our inexperienced coaches who had never been to this type of a tournament. Two weeks before the start of the first game, he is told he is not allowed to be the coach, cannot eat with the players or stay in the dorms. He must find and pay for his own hotel room and meals. Why. It seams the reason, according to the Little League Rule book is that if you run a tournament, which I have been doing every year since 2004, you cannot coach a tournament team. The same goes for league presidents, or country directors. I must now resign from all three of these positions. Since not a single Ugandan parent ever comes to see any of our tournament games, this may now result in some serious problems for Uganda Little League. My job as always has been to coach the kids and to coach the coaches and umpires so baseball and softball can flourish in Uganda for the benefit of the children. Time will tell. All our people interested in the sport want to be coaches, not administrators.

 

September 2015:

 

We have come through a very eventful June, July and August and now things are beginning to settle down at the school in Uganda as the students are all returning for the third and final semester of this year. June saw 36 students travel to Nairobi, Kenya to apply for their visas to Poland and get finger printed, basically losing a week of school. Then those same students traveled to Poland in July, losing two weeks of school, and then two thirds of them traveled to the U.S. in August, but still missing the last days of the second term. It is expected that this term will be much more normal as all students should be at school for all the days of the semester.
August became quite an experience for many people besides the players that managed to travel to the U.S. to participate in their respective tournaments. There are many adults at the school, at Little League International and the U.S. Embassy in Uganda that would not like to go through what happened a second time. The kids had a great time in Portland, Oregon for the girls and Williamsport, Pa for the boys and everyone learned a lot. I think everyone would like to see some changes made in the timing of July events and August events, but I doubt that they will be able to be made. The real solution would be to give Africa its own regional tournament with the winner going to the respective World Series in the U.S. Unfortunately, Little League International will not let it happen now.

 

The problems regard timing of European Tournaments and travel and U.S. visa timing. The girls did not get home from Poland until the evening of August 3. On August 4, they paid the $4500 payment for the 28 US visas required so that they could make the next day appointment at the U.S. embassy that the players and their parents and the coaches had to attend for the visa interview. The U.S. embassy told everyone that they would get the visas but they would not get their passports back until August 12, but the girls had to leave Uganda on August 10. Little League International would not authorize it's travel agency to purchase the airline tickets for either team until they were sure the passports with the visas were in the hands of the teams. The U.S. Embassy visa section claimed they were over worked and never want to see this happen again. Finally, they did return the passports on Monday afternoon, August 10, and only then did the travel agency begin to look to book flights for 15 people to get the softball team to Portland, Oregon in time for Tuesday afternoon, with opening ceremonies scheduled for Wednesday. Those tickets did not materialize until 6:30PM Uganda time on August 10 with the coaches now notified you have less than three hours to get your team together and to the airport when the travel time from the school to the airport is about 2 hours when there is no traffic.

 

The Managing Director of the school is also the head softball coach of the school and she had to get to the school and get the bus to take them to the airport. Upon arrival at the airport, they found there was no ticket for one of the coaches. Fortunately, she had significant dollars on her that she had intended to use to purchase things for the girls in Portland that he now had to use to purchase the ticket for the coach. Fortunately, I was to meet the team in Portland and I had booked a motel room for myself and rented a car and had a charge card with me. While the girls had a wonderful time in Portland, and made many friends amongst the players and spectators, they were starving. These are not American girls. They do many athletic activities, which they enjoy, but they also eat. What was being served for meals with no seconds was barely an appetizer for them. Since they were staying in a hotel with each room having a small refrigerator and micro wave oven, we could do certain things to supplement their meals, such as pizzas, frozen microwave able meals, chicken pieces and lots of soda that I was able to purchase at super markets and at Domino's pizza, and bring these items to the hotel with my rented car. The girls went to the zoo when some one arranged for their transport. A Portland family brought them to their home for a very extensive barbeque, But then problems surfaced as the head of the neurology department at the University Hospital invited them for a tour and a lunch. Unfortunately, at the time of the lunch, they were supposed to at the airport, that due to miss communication, they were not aware of and thus missed their plane. Again the new adult friends took care of them for sleeping, feeding and getting them to the airport the next day. They were very generous and adapted the head coach as their daughter.

The boys only found out that they were going to be traveling early on Thursday morning from Uganda on Tuesday morning and thanks to the Managing Director, were able to arrange for their travel to leave the complex before 3 AM to get to the airport on time. Once again, they were confronted with no ticket for one of the coaches. This time, Allen was not there with dollars as she was in Portland, Oregon. The coach now had to travel back to the complex and I arranged for him to fly on Sunday where I would meet him in New York and bring him to Williamsport on Monday. The boys, because of no seats on such a late date, had to fly south to South Africa, sit there for 12 hours and then fly to New York where a bus took them to Williamsport. From the time they left the complex to the time they arrived in New York, what should have been about 20 hours became 33 hours, again sitting in South Africa for 12 hours with no dollars or Euros to purchase things to eat or drink. Coming through Europe, the between plane stay would have been 2 hours or less and no need to purchase food or water. Going back was the same route.
The last time an Ugandan team came here was 2012. We were able to bring them to Trenton, N.J. to play against a West Windsor Little League team and then go to a Trenton Thunder game in the evening. Unfortunately, that Little League game was rained out and we wanted this team to come and play the game this year. In 2012, they also played a game north of Philadelphia, went to a Phillies game, then to Yankee Stadium for a Yankee game and then with the North American Ugandan Society hosting them, to the United Nations for a tour of the General Assembly and Security Council and a visit to Major League Baseball's Offices. Due to the lack of our input into the scheduling, we had to pay $2400 to change the airline ticket to delay their departure so they could once again come to Trenton to finally play that game. The West Windsor Little League has been one of our equipment donors and you can see West Windsor Shirts on some of the players on the web site pictures taken at the school in Uganda.

Several years ago, we had said we wanted to get the Ugandan teams to the Little League World Series, but not only to get there, but to win. While we did not win the World Series, we did show that we can and did win. The girls became the first European team to ever beat an American Regional Winner and just fell short of making the championship round. The boys got the first win in the regular tournament and showed that they were certainly competitive on the International level. While we are the best in baseball and softball in Europe and Africa, we are certainly competitive in the world. Now we need the rest of Africa to come and try and beat us, because we can now be their measuring stick as to how good they have to be in order to compete on the world stage. We hope they do that.

To avoid all the headaches at Little League International, their travel agency, the U.S. Embassy and for any African team coming to the Little League World Series, Little League needs to break Africa away from Europe. We could host our tournament in June and have plenty of time to get U.S. visas, airline tickets, and have African input regarding travel arrangements.

Finally, Uganda needs to evaluate the benefits of paying $35,000 per team to participate in the regional tournaments which consists of about 2, or at most 3 competitive games. That is a very high price to pay per competitive game. Ninety five percent of the cost disappears for African teams if the tournaments were to be held in Uganda.

 

November 2015:

 

We have very interesting happenings taking place in Uganda involving baseball, softball and the school. As some people may know, Major League Baseball has been running a one week program in South Africa for the last 3 or 4 years the first week of every December. This has replaced the effort MLB used to make in bringing some Africans to their three week camp in Italy each August. In any event, for the first time, two of our older players will be attending that camp. What is special about this is MLB has not seen these two players but are taking our word for it that they are amongst the best in Africa, even though they have only turned 15 recently. We have been notified that a number of Major League Baseball scouts will be at the program and they are looking to see these two players.

 

In regard to scouts, the Little League Complex will be hosting two scouts from the Cincinnati Reds during the early days of January. They are coming to check up on all our players at the school, including those that went to Williamsport for the Little League World Series. We have already been told the drills that they want our players to go through, including an actual game. In addition, Allen and I will be meeting with a number of teams in Nashville during the Winter Meetings taking place the week of December 6. We hope we can convince Major League Baseball to support the baseball programs we are working on with the Uganda Commissioner of Sports. While most Major League Teams operate baseball academies in the Dominican Republic, we feel that we have a better proposal for them. Everyone knows that the Major League teams cannot touch our players until they turn 16, but they may have the thought that they can then send them to their academies in the Dominican Republic. That has been suggested to us and we have shot it down. All these players speak English and they all need to go to school. With the help of Major League Baseball's Office, we could set up a lot of secondary schools as baseball academies that is also supported by Major League Teams without anyone being signed to a contract until they graduate secondary school. It is possible for the teams and Major League Baseball to take a school for young players and when they graduate they come into that team's program, so that each school becomes like an academy but allows the kids to continue their education without a contract. Since the schools in Uganda are not confined to taking students from within certain boundaries, each school can recruit players, possibly aided by their companion Major League Baseball team. The associated team could also train the coaches and have some significant control over them at the same time.

Starting on January 16, secondary school all star teams will be arriving at the Little League complex to compete for the Uganda National Championship for the S1-S2 level teams. In a year or two, we will add a National Championship tournament for S3-S4 and then S5-S6 a couple years after. This will be the first National Tournament at this level and is being run with the great assistance of the Uganda Commissioner of Sports. This will be a double elimination tournament, but no matter what happens, every team will be playing a game each of the first four days with the championship game being played on the morning of January 21. This tournament, and the eventual other two National Championship Tournaments, will always be held in January of every year.

Prior to the Championship tournament, starting on January 10, we will be running our annual coaches clinic for about 60 to 70 coaches, both new and old. We are going to concentrating on the new coaches going into the Secondary School program and our existing Little League programs. We will try and accommodate additional coaches from programs that we believe will be series in putting together a serious program.

Girls have not been left out of our program. It seems there is an International Tournament that is going to take place in British Columbia in July 2016. Ruth Hoffman, a Canadian, has come to look for players to represent Uganda in this tournament. For the first time in a couple of years, she stopped by with a couple of Canadian coaches to look at our girls. They were impressed and asked for five of them to join the National Team they are putting together. I believe before they are through, they will be taking more. Even though these girls are only 13 years of age, they are amongst the best in Uganda and it is my understanding, this Canadian tournament has no age limit. This gives you some idea as to how far behind the sport is amongst the older players in Uganda. They are also taking our coach, Allen.

At the school, we have a prior visitor who is going to be coming to Uganda for January 4 to teach a program at the school for movie making. This is a pilot program for 20 of our older students. She intends to also film the program as a possible documentary, and if it is successful, it will be a part of the school curriculum. Jennifer has visited the school three years ago and she intends to run the three week program prior to the start of classes on January 24. Hopefully, it makes to your local television station sometime in 2016.

 

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January 1, 2016:

The new year will be here in a few more days after I write this news page. A number of significant things are going to be taking place during my trip to Uganda, which will begin this evening, because a significant number of events have and are taking place in a number of areas.

Baseball: As most people are aware, the baseball winter meetings took place during the first week of December and they were very eventful as far as Uganda was concerned. We were invited to spend some time with Mr. Eric Lee, the assistant GM of the Cincinnati Reds. This was brought about as a result of their Global Scouting Director working with us to arrange for two of their scouts to come to the school the first week of January. Due to time, we are bringing 20 players back to the school to go through certain drills and play a couple of games under the sharp eyes and stop watches and radar guns of the scouts. This is very significant for us and the baseball program in Uganda. It marks the first time for actual MLB scouts coming to Uganda to evaluate the talent that we have been trying to develop.

Prior to 2016, Dave Dombrowski had told us that if we could get about 150 players turning 15 with some baseball experience, scouts would be coming. While we are not quite at that number, Cincinnati is the first of what we hope may be scouts from all the Major League Teams. While they can only be in Uganda during the first couple of days, we hope that future visits will allow us to take them around Uganda to visit all our schools playing baseball on a regular basis so they will get to see hundreds of players. It is wonderful that Cincinnati has seen fit to send their scouts, and I am sure others will be following. Where is Major League Baseball International? We have been trying to get to them to begin to work with the Uganda Commissioner of Sports on rapidly expanding the talent pool of Uganda baseball players. Five years ago, during what was then our first clinic, and two representative of MLB's envoy program working with us wanted to know how serious we were in Uganda. Their question to me was what would happen if something stop me from coming to Uganda. The short answer at that time was that it would collapse. That is why Allen Vivian was brought to Nashville in December.

Allen Vivian and I spent time with the International Scouting people and GMs of Boston, New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers, LA Dodgers, in addition to Cincinnati. Her comments and speech answered many of the questions I got five years ago and said Uganda is very serious about baseball and softball, and we are doing it now! We also spent some time with David James of the RBI program of Major League Baseball. David and us are trying to work on getting a team of 15 year old players to come to the U.S. this year, possibly in April. The object would be to do something in regard to Jackie Robinson Day and have the Ugandan kids play 8 to 10 games in as many days so that more scouts could see some of the young kids. While the RBI program would not be in full swing in April, we are hoping to fill in the schedule with local Varsity High School teams.

In the meantime, starting on January 10 in Uganda, we will begin our seventh annual two week coaches clinic for 60 to 70 coaches and umpires. Part of that clinic will include the first Secondary School National Championship Tournament for kids in S1 and S2. It will be a double elimination tournament starting on January 17, with the championship game played on the morning of January 21. This tournament will be run every January under the direction of the Uganda Commissioner of Sports and Uganda Little League. It consists of the all star teams of eight leagues coming to the Little League Complex to compete. Possibly as early as next year, a second National Championship Tournament will be added to this one when the players move up to S3 and S4. A third will come shortly after that as the kids move to S5 and S6. Thousands of kids will be playing to get into these tournaments every January. When that happens, we expect to see many visitors from Major League Teams watching these tournaments.

Softball: The annual January clinic is also for softball coaches and umpires. This year, Uganda is expecting to send a team to the World Championships in British Columbia in July. While there is no age limit, it is expected that the Uganda team will consist of more than half of the players from the AVRS school team that went to the Little League World Series in August of 2015, even though they will only be turning 14 in 2016. A statement like that demonstrates the progress we have made, but also how far we still need to go. But it is a start and Allen Vivian has been asked to be one of the coaches.

School: In late January, the AVRS Secondary School of Math and Science for the Athletically Talented will begin its fourth year. With what we have accomplished in athletic competition and academic program, we are developing a significant following and many more applicants are applying each year. What this means is that both are academic ability and athletic ability is improving each year as we become more selective. In turn, we continue to make great strides with our capitol structure so that are facilities both athletically and academically are the best. We are getting there as great progress is made every year. We are in the process of being accredited by the Middle States Organization out side Philadelphia. It may take longer than 18 months, but we are in the process.

Starting on January 3, one of our past visitors to the complex of two years ago is coming with a crew to run a three week program on film making. It will be for half of the students entering their fourth year at the school They will be shown how to write, act, direct and film a short movie. At the same time, I have asked them to make a documentary of what they are doing so that maybe that will make it one day to American Television. Look for it late in 2016. It is possible that they may also film the drills that the Cincinnati scouts put some of the baseball players through during their visit to the complex.

 

Breast Cancer: The Uganda Breast Cancer Clinic Directors will be meeting in Kampala early in January to plot our future course. We currently believe that we will be opening the Breast Imaging Clinic sometime after July 1, 2016. How we want to operate and when is up for discussion. The new instrument that we fully expect to replace mammograms and thus eliminate benign biopsies is in the final stages of FDA approval. Supposedly, it is better than originally imagined and is constantly being improved. The instrument is available for us to obtain as of January 1. How and when and where we operate it are the questions that need to be answered. Three years ago, we thought we would need to raise $3 million to operate it as a free clinic. The people who thought they could obtain the money found it very difficult to do. We were originally going to operate it as part of a clinical trial. That is no longer needed, but money is still hard to obtain. After this January meeting, we should have a pretty good idea of what we need to do to become the first African prototype program that may eliminate benign biopsies and enable breast cancer to be detected long before it requires any major surgery. We will keep you informed of our progress. If you wish to join us, please feel free to contact us.  info@UgandaLittleLeagueBaseball.org

 

February, 2016:

During the second and third weeks of January, we held our annual Uganda Coaches Clinic for our usual 60 or so coaches who were already coaching programs or were just starting to coach their programs. It was a very eventful two weeks and very different in some ways from the past. For new coaches, we certainly distributed simplified rules, ran our usual tennis ball training sessions in catching and throwing and our usual tennis ball "T" ball tournament the first week and our pitching tournament the second week with the respective champions meeting on the final morning of the program to decide the eventual winning team. But what was different, we broke up the teams into half new comers and half experienced coaches and mentors. The idea being that not only would the new coaches learn from the formal instruction, but the experienced mentors were now responsible for the training of the new members on their team. In addition, a great deal of effort was spent on getting everyone to actually umpire games and learn from actual drills that the S1-S2 local team was going through. The ultimate goal was to have everyone learn from the first annual S1-S2 National Championship tournament.

January was marked by some very different and significant programs taking place. On January 4th and 5th, we entertained two scouts from the Cincinnati Reds. We tried to get them to stay at the complex, but they claimed they already had a hotel booked in Kampala, but after seeing our guest house, the next time they will be staying. We brought 20 or our better players to the complex for two reasons. The S1-S2 boys were going to be playing in the National Tournament later in the month and the 10 S3 boys were going to be taking part in a very special program for the three weeks before school was scheduled to start. As a result on January 4 and 5, the 20 boys participated in four baseball games, one each morning and one each afternoon for the tow days, put on for the benefit of the Cincinnati scouts. The older students, composed of 10 girls and 10 boys from formally S3 were to be taking part in a three week program designed to teach them how to write, produce, and actually make a movie, which they did do. That movie will be shown at the Kampala film festival during June of this year. At the same time, the instructors were also making a documentary on how they ran the class. That we look forward to seeing on International television. During the scouts visit, they were filming some of the baseball games being played in the morning and afternoon of January 4 and 5 and were going to send those clips to the Cincinnati Reds scouting bureau.

During the coaches program, we distributed over 12 full sets of catcher's equipment, 20 dozen baseballs, 8 dozen softballs, over 100 baseball gloves, 300 tennis balls, over 50 baseball and softball bats, and at least 70 helmets to the 12 programs who were represented at the coaches clinic. Our tournament for the S1-S2 Championship did not go off as planed. While the government was supposed to provide the transport for the teams, the head masters of 3 of the respective schools did not want to send the teams without the money in advance. Thus, three teams did not come. One of the teams from Soroti did come. Thus a very serious problem solving session involving the officers of the Head Master's Association and the Uganda Sport Commission and us took place to make this program work smoothly in the future. What was resolved was that we would attend a serious meeting upon my return to Uganda in March with four very serious Head Masters who will make sure they provide four coaches each that will make sure this program works. This meeting will also involve me and the Uganda Sports Commissioner and several other people. It will be limited to only four schools at the start because there will be money involved for each school's winning coach. Private schools will also be able to compete in the tournament but would not be able to obtain any government aid in travel. In May, the coaches of these schools will be at the complex during our tournaments and they will be trained on what is expected of them in running their programs. They will go back at the start of the second semester and continue through the third semester in running their respective leagues. In December, they will select an all star team of their league to come to the Little League complex next January to compete for the National Championship. We already have more applicants than we need right now. I am confident that this will work this time. All these championship tournaments in the future will take place in January of each year, expanding soon into the S3-S4 bracket and then into the S5-S6 level. Everyone is committed to making this work. We expect the scouts of many teams coming to Uganda every January for these tournaments in the near future.

During the month of January, we held our annual Uganda Little League meeting. It was decided that we would not send an 11-12 year old girl team to the regional tournaments since that would require the players to make a 16 hour bus trip each way to Kenya to be fingerprinted for the visas. We would allow the boys 11-12 year olds to do that. The girls we are planning on entering them in the Europe/Africa tournament for the 14 and under girls that will be played in Italy this July since Italy has an embassy in Kampala where we would have to apply for their EU visas. For the older boys, we are working on having them come to the U.S. directly and try to have them involved with the RBI program in Cincinnati this August. If that cannot be worked out, we then may decide to have them play in the 15-16 year old tournament that will also be played in Italy. What is ironical about this is Italy has no place to house or feed the teams during these tournaments. We were told about 8 years ago, Uganda cannot host these tournaments because we had no place to house or feed these teams, which ironically, we now do, but still cannot host any of these tournaments. Africa is still forced to keep paying the $35,000 entry fee cost to play in each regional tournament and thus all of Africa is excluded from playing in Little League Tournaments, unless they can find a foolish person who thinks paying $10,000 per tournament game played is good economics.

The last program of interest is that our annual meeting of the Uganda Cancer Clinic was held during January. Dr. Rosemary was selected to travel to San Francisco to partake in viewing the, operation and training of the Ultra Sound Breast Imaging device that will change the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer around the world. While our original goal was to start the clinic operating this July, it will now be put off until the start of 2017. This will allow us to get use to the ultimate design of the instrument that will ultimately come on to the world market. The science is now proven, but the esthetics will be greatly improved over the next couple of months. We look forward to the future of taking down breast cancer in the world tomorrow.

 

April, 2016:

Spring is upon us in the U.S., but in Uganda, the weather remains the same as does the length of day. But other things are really changing rapidly. The recent presidential elections in Uganda forced us to delay opening the school by four weeks. Our first term will thus be lengthened until May 6, extended by three weeks to partially make up for the late start. Our annual welcome to the school party for the forty new students in this years S1 class thus was not held until March 18, four weeks into the new term. It still was a big hit with all kinds of performances put on by the students. It started at 2PM and did not end until 11PM. It ended at that time because there were several games being played the next day against visiting teams and the Head Master felt it was time to get to bed.

During March 12, the winning athletic/academic teams for last years S2 and S3 classes were treated to a day at the beach and a lunch and dinner away from the school. A great time was had by all, which is a great incentive for the teams in this years S2, S3 and S4 classes to work on their weak teammates in academics and athletics in order to win this year's competition. The teams were reorganized this year entirely by each classes designated captains.

Baseball and Softball:

 

This years National tournaments will take place starting on May 9 for eight teams of boys 11-12 years old and 4 teams of boys 16 and under. This week of games for the boys will be followed by the girls tournaments starting on May 16. Once again there will be a double elimination tournament for the eight teams of 11-12 year olds, with a championship game scheduled for Friday morning. The older teams will play each other for the first three days and their championship game will be played on Thursday morning amongst the two best teams.

It is our expectation to send three teams to the Europe/Africa Little League Regional Tournaments. The only team we will send to Kenya for EU visas will be the 11-12 year old boys so they can play in Kutno, Poland. We do not want to make the 16 hour bus trip each way to Kenya just to have everyone fingerprinted. The boys will be playing in the 16 and under tournament which will be played outside Milan, Italy. We expect to send the girls to the 16 and under tournament in the Netherlands, even though most of them will be only 13. We are doing this because they are the only tournaments where the embassies for the EU visas are in Kampala, thus avoiding that long bus trip to Kenya. All these problems would go away if Little League International would allow Africa to hold their own Regional Tournaments. We know the countries surrounding Uganda have Little League programs that would supply us with at least 3 or 4 teams other than ourselves, not counting South Africa, Cameron, Ghana and Nigeria. We could host them all at no cost to any of the countries other than to travel to Uganda. Unfortunately, none of them can afford the money to get them to Europe and thus their competitive level remains very weak.

Speaking of Baseball, there is a Japanese program to start a baseball league with no age limit and it started about three weeks ago in Uganda. There are about seven teams, of which 6 are composed of adults and the AVRS composed of 13-15 year olds. The problem is the program will pay for half the transport of 13 participants per team, much better than nothing, but basically, each team plays only one game per month through November. We do not want to travel any distance to play only one game as it disrupts what we are doing at the school the day we are supposed to play. We asked to play two games on the same day, saving some travel money and allowing us to bring two teams, so at least 20 of our players can play on that day while the rest of the boys stay at the school and play amongst themselves. Well Friday was our fist scheduled games, and even though we only allow our pitches to pitch three innings, thus using three pitchers in each game we play, and having two different teams represent us in the two games, both games were won easily, with the second game being mercy ruled. That may sound that our players are very good, but it is more a reflection of the quality of play of the adults in Africa. Right now, our AVRS team of 14 and 15 year olds is probably the best in all of Africa. But since there is no Africa Little League tournament, we may never know for sure. We will welcome any team that wants to play us to come to the school. We always feed our opponents lunch when they come, and we will do the same for those that want to come to beat us in boys or girls. We just want good teams to come to give us an incentive to get better.

Construction:

 

On May 1, construction will start on the arena. The plans have all been approved and this will probably be the best area to watch a game indoors anywhere in Uganda when it is finished. The main building for playing surface will be finished by December with the locker rooms, meeting areas and VIP suite done by early 2017. The facility will have 4 locker rooms and two sets of toilets and showers so one game can immediately follow another without anyone sharing locker rooms. It will also have a deep stage at one end for plays to be performed, dance recitals, movies to be shown, music concerts and other large gatherings. We expect it to be the home for the Ugandan National basketball team and other potential Ugandan Olympic teams. After this construction we will work on the 400 meter eight lane running track and then a swimming venue for International competition. In the mean time we are drilling bore holes to increase our drinking water supply and fencing for fields and site security. We still have a lot of things to do yet, but we are getting there, year by year.

Our reputation is spreading as we continue to make progress. During the tournament we expect to host at least 4 teacher/coaches from each of 4 government secondary schools to train them to become good coaches. We and the Uganda Sport Commissioner and their respective Head Masters expect them to go back during the second and third school term and each have four teams of S1and S2 students playing at least two games per week and practice during the daily Physical Ed. classes. Thus each school is expected to have a four team league where at the end of the year, they will have a league winner. The winning coach will collect a prize of cash and will bring a team of his best league all stars to compete against all the secondary schools at the Little League complex for the National Championship each January. The goal of the Head Master's Association is to have at least 40 government schools eventually participating, plus all the private schools that wish to join at the S1-S2 level, then the S3-S4 level and eventually to the S5-S6 level.

In January, 2017, we are planning to finally start up the breast cancer screening clinic using the new Ultra Sound device that will eliminate the need for 80% of the unneeded biopsies. We had a meeting with the USAID people at the U.S. Embassy in March and they were very helpful in their suggestions. While congress will only allow them to support communicable diseases, they were not restricted from offering advice on other sources. We look forward to continued communications between us and the embassy people. We are looking forward to possibly hosting the new U.S. Ambassador at the complex sometime in May or early June.

 

May, 2016:

Will any African team make it to a Little League Regional Tournaments, much less the World Series?

 

On Monday, April 25, Uganda Little League was informed by Little League International that the Allen V.R. Stanley Secondary School would no longer be allowed to participate in any Little League Regional Tournaments because Little League International has determined it to be a "Sports School" and according to a rule that took them four years to find, "Sport Schools" are not allowed to participate. Since this has been the only program in Uganda willing to overcome the $35,000 barrier and visa problems that Little League puts in front of African Schools to participate in their regional tournaments, I doubt you will see an African team in any of their tournaments again unless they suddenly agree to break Africa away from Europe and hold tournaments in Africa.

A little bit of history is in order here about Little League International and their knowledge of how the AVRS school operates. Back in January 2013 is when the AVRS school started. Our goal was to find the best academic/athletic students and develop them so they might be able to obtain scholarships to US universities to study to be scientists and engineers. We would hope to do this via half athletic scholarships and half academic. In order to obtain those scholarships, we would need to produce the best academics and athletes possible in any sport. We would bring these students to the school, house and feed them and train them at no cost to them or their parents. We wanted the best student/athletes in a number of sports where scholarships are given out. All this was published and can be found in our history section going all the way back to the fall of 2012. Little League International knew this, because in 2013, they banned the school from participating because we had several students from Lugazi that had played in the World Series in 2012 and they came to the school without Little League International's permission. They then changed a rule that allowed students at a school to be a league. That allowed us to participate in 2014. Unfortunately, that year the EU refused to grant the three teams we were hoping to send to Europe visas because they claimed that we did not prove we had enough money to travel the 50 miles from the Warsaw Airport to the tournament site even after having already shown the embassy the $60,000 worth of airline tickets we had to pay in advance for to bring to the embassy.

We overcame that barrier in 2015 by showing the embassy that there were funds available to the school worth over $4,000,000 that would cover any costs the embassy could possibly dream up that would prevent the players from returning to Uganda. Thus, we were expecting to do the same thing this year for three teams for this years tournaments. That was until April 25 when Little League suddenly found this rule that they have chosen to suddenly enforce. They knew we are going to be going to these tournaments back in February. What took them so long to find this rule and why did they decide to enforce it now and not in 2013? I am sure we will never know the real reason.

Enough of the bad news. Starting May 7, the AVRS school will be the site of the boys 11-12 Uganda National Little League tournament for 8 teams. It will be a double elimination tournament, but even so, every team will be playing games every day from Monday to Thursday, even though they may already be eliminated from the title game early in the week. The title game will be held at 10AM on Friday, May 11. At the same time, we will host an under 16 tournament for boys, also starting on May 7 with every team playing each other and then the second and third place team playing each other for the right to play the first place team for the championship.

Starting on May 14, we will have 8 girl softball teams, age 11-12, playing for their championship with the title game played on Friday, May 18. Also at the same time we will host an under 16 tournament for the girls, just like the boys tournament the week before.

With Africa no longer participating in Little League Regional Tournaments leading to the respective 8 Little League World Series, we may host our own All Africa Little League tournaments. As we have always promised, if we do this, we will house and feed the teams at the Uganda Little League complex at no cost to the teams. Back in 2007, we were told by Little League International that one of the reasons the Middle East Africa regional tournament had to be held in Poland was because we had no place to house and feed the visiting teams in Uganda. Well we have had that ability since 2009, but still we are denied tournaments while Chez Republic, Italy and the Netherlands are hosting regional tournaments this year where, if we went, we would have to pay for our own hotel rooms, food and even be forced to hire a bus to get from the hotels to the fields to play a game. How come they can host tournaments and Africa cannot? Another good question that will never be answered.

At this moment, and it is still very early, if we host the All Africa tournaments, we would expect Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania to join us as we know they have government supported programs. South Africa, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Ghana may also join us in Uganda, since they supposedly have viable programs, but we are not sure of them other than South Africa. The only thing they would have to do would be to travel to Uganda. We would cover their transport from the airport to the complex, house and feed them for the week and expect them to be prepared to play games every day they are at the complex. The visa problems any African team has in trying to get to the EU disappears as a number of African countries do not need Ugandan visas, and the few that do, would get the visas when they arrive at the airport.

One last thing about this which in my eyes is very funny. Finally, after 10 years of invitations, one of the Little League International officers was planning on finally coming to watch the Uganda tournaments and visit the complex and possibly learn about the school, at least that was what was being planned for until April 25. Suddenly, even though we were still hopping he would come, he was stopped from coming. How pathetic.

Potentially really good news regarding our Cancer Clinic. By the end of this year, an instrument that may replace mammograms and unnecessary biopsies may have final FDA approval and possibly be ready for sale early in 2017. If that happens, we will be ready to begin operating our clinic with this instrument sometime after July 2017. This clinic would be a prototype for all of Africa. The results might eliminate any cutting of women's breasts in the future due to cancer. We have applied for a significant grant via USAID to get the clinic operating. We would need to purchase the instrument, train the operators and the technicians who would maintain it before it can start up. Our eventual goals is be the training center for all of Africa and possibly, if done right, maybe eliminate disfiguring surgery of African Women's breasts due to cancer in the near future.
 

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July, 2016:

 
This year marks the first time in the existence of the AVRS school that it has been told that while you are not banned from Little League Tournaments, they are going to make it impossible for us to participate with any team unless we change the goals and means of operating the school. We can send teams if the players only come from Kampala and from no where else. Our goal was to send a number of teams just as we did last year. The new hurdle is created because our students come from all parts of Uganda, not just from Kampala. Everything is supplied to the students at the school free of charge as we never wanted financial concerns to interfere with a student coming to the school as we always wanted the best student/athletes from all over the country. About 10% of our students come from Kampala, or currently about 15 students. We have boys and girls in approximate equal number that make up that number and the ages currently range from 11 through 15, which means we could theoretically send as many as 6 teams to Europe/Africa tournaments this year. How to you staff six teams from a total of 15 students? No one is allowed to play baseball or softball with 3 players on a team. Thus Little League makes sure AVRS doesn't go anymore because we will not change the objectives of the school.

We still held our tournaments in May. The AVRS girls won theirs, but the 11-12 year old boys did not, and to our surprise, the school that did win claimed they had a sponsor willing to put up the money to get them to the Regional Tournament in Kutno, Poland. When we informed Williamsport about this, they were shocked that anyone in Uganda could beat AVRS, much less they had the money to go. We also told them the players had their birth certificates and passports and were ready to get their visas from the Polish Embassy in Kenya. All they were waiting for was their visa invitation letter from Little League. One month later, the school was still waiting for the invitation letter when Little League International decided that they did not know enough about this league and thus would not allow them to come to the tournament and would not send an invitation letter. What is Little League International afraid of? There are lots of possible explanations as to why was AVRS basically banned after four years, and now no one from Uganda is going to be allowed to go. But of all those explanations, none of them speak favorably of Little League International.
On Saturday, June 25, the people who ran our three week film making class in January came to Uganda for the premier of the movie the students had made in January. The students wrote the script, directed the movie and acted in it. The instructors brought the raw footage to New York to be spliced and edited and brought it to Kampala for the premier. The movie is a little over 40 minutes and it was a big event in Uganda which is now competing with Nigeria to be the film making center for all of Africa. All the important people were there, including the entire class of 20 students who made the film. They are now working on a full length movie.

On July 17, we will be hosting Mike Randall at the Little League Complex for a day of baseball.. Mike is coming to look for possible future professional baseball players to invite to the program that has been held each December for the past 3 or 4 years in South Africa. It is sponsored by Major League Baseball. This will be their first visit to the complex as the local federation, who they normally work with, wouldn't even tell them where the school was since we refused to give them any money they always demanded from us. Mike knows about us and they are coming on their own. It will also give us a chance to talk to them about what we are doing with the Uganda Commissioner of Sports and getting baseball into government secondary schools and holding annual National Championships every January at three different age levels. This January will have the first National Championship Tournament for the students in S1-S2. Nest year, we hope to expand upward to a second tournament that will be for students in S3 and S4.

On May 5, construction started on the Allen VR Stanley Pavilion, It will be finished in time for the January 2017 school year to make use of it for the two basketball courts it will have, volley ball courts, badminton courts and a large stage for various performances. It will be the most modern indoor arena in Uganda, and possibly all of East Africa. It will have four locker rooms and a large private suite for VIP visitors, in addition to being set up for televising events. As this is written, construction is well ahead of schedule. It will also be the home for the Uganda National Basketball team and possibly other National events.

The second semester will end at the school during the first couple of days of August. In the meantime, the boys, playing in the adult league being supported by a fund out of Japan, has continued it's play of about one game per month since early March and the first half has now ended. The AVRS school composed of its students of which none is older than 15 is in first place by a large margin of the seven team league. They have played the other 6 teams, and are 5-1. The team they lost to by a score of 5-3 was beaten by two other teams that AVRS beat. Most of their wins were by mercy rule. The team always plays two games when they play, which means we played two different teams on the three days we played. We also restrict our pitchers to only three innings, and thus we may use as many as six pitchers on the days we play. We currently have, according to radar gun readings, two pitchers throwing at 86 miles per hour and five others in the lower 80s. What we are trying to do is to teach the others in Uganda that you must develop pitchers if you want to play in a tournament and win. The only way you can do this is by giving them all a chance to play.

 

September, 2016

 
It has been a different summer this year from the past, but the future looks interesting. As everyone by now knows, Uganda was not allowed to participate in the Little League Regional Tournaments held in Europe. Will Uganda ever be allowed to participate again, we do not know. In any event, we are moving forward. With a series of visits by various people, we are already making plans to get Africa into its own Regional Little League program. In late July, a visitor from South Africa Baseball and softball came to Uganda to help Mike Randall evaluate young Ugandan baseball talent to bring to the one week MLB program held in South Africa each December. For the first time, they came to the AVRS School and were very much impressed by the ability they saw there compared to everything else they have been seeing in Uganda in the past years. There is nothing that can develop talent in baseball, or for that matter in any sport, like playing many competitive games. In any event, we were informed that South Africa dropped out of Little League a couple of year ago, but really liked the idea of Africa running its own Little League Region and hosting All Africa tournaments. When informed that we intend to run a double elimination tournament in May 2017 for any Africa country that wants to compete, we were informed that South Africa would be one of those teams. We would expect Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, in addition to South Africa to attend, and possibly Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, and possibly some others. We would host the tournament at no cost to anyone other than getting themselves to Entebbe Airport. The last three would encounter significant airfare costs, but those would be their only costs contrary to the European tournaments that require Uganda to pay for hotels, meals and even bus transport to and from the fields. When the tournaments are over, will Africa ever be invited to the Little League World Series. I do not think so initially, but how can they keep a continent of over one billion people out of the Little League World Series. We are very tired of them studying what to do with Africa for over 12 years and doing nothing. How long do you need to study something before you do something?

During late July, Mr. Bill Bavasi and Mr. Garth Iorg of Major League Baseball came to the complex, along with Mike Randall. We subsequently sat down with Mr. Bavasi along with the Ugandan Commissioner of Sports and spoke about what is going on with Baseball in Uganda. Mr. Bavasi wants to do something, and thus received a lot of information and many directions as to how MLB might want to get involved with developing the talent in the country. Uganda is definitely going to do what it has planned and that is to introduce baseball into many government secondary schools. Already, we have five schools, each with four teams playing in their own leagues at the S1 and S2 grade level. The Uganda National Baseball Tournament for these schools will be held at the Uganda Little League Complex in January of 2017 with each school selecting and sending their respective all star teams to the tournament paid for by the Ugandan Government. Next year, each school will be expected to have four teams added at the S3 to S4 level, and eventually to the S5 to S6 level. Thus each school will have 12 teams playing at three different levels with National Championships held every January for the respective all star teams. Other private schools are free to join in the tournaments. The government goal is to get at least 40 schools participating with qualification tournaments around the country, plus any private school would be free to participate, the only thing is they would have to pay their own travel expenses. Will we produce players? You bet we will.

Arrangements have been made to bring our older AVRS players to New Jersey to play for 7 to 10 days in the Black Sox Foundation program. The exact dates are to be worked out, but they will be here in the later part of August. The things that will affect the dates is what else will these players be doing at that time. We were told earlier this year that Uganda would be part of the RBI program tournament in Cincinnati in August 2017. We hope RBI will also allow the girls to play. We are working to verify that this will happen, but are not positive at the moment. We hope to send a junior team to a junior softball tournament in Florida in July 2017. We are also working with the Federation on getting them to join the Uganda Olympic Committee and thus begin to work our way into competing our way into the 2020 Olympics in Baseball and Softball. The Uganda Olympic Committee wants to see baseball and softball as part of its program, but the Federation needs to officially join the Committee and follow its rules. We hope they are smart enough to do that. That would also open the door for Uganda to participate in the 2021 World Baseball Classic. These are just some of things going on.

The AVRS School continues to build. We hosted the Mpige district track meet for the first time. The school came in first and there for represented the district at the National Championships. We sent 14 participants in boys and girls. One of our S3 students ran 100 meters in 11.03 seconds with very little training in track. We definitely have talent at the school, what we do not have is experienced coaches, but we are working on that.

We are proceeding with the building of the arena. It will be completed by March 1, 2017, when we will have a ribbon cutting ceremony. It is one of the best in all of Uganda, if not the best currently. We will be using it starting in December of this year for the students. In any event, we did enter a team in the junior girls basketball program. They went 8-1 and are now scheduled to be in the finals early in October. They just started playing basket ball in May. We have a pretty good coach here and we expect to have the boys playing in the program next year. Our new arena may be the center of many big tournaments in the future, not only for basketball, but volley ball, badminton, and possibly even net ball. We continue to make progress.

During October, we expect to register all our current S4 students to take the SAT exams in early December. This will be the first true test of what our school is doing academically and is extremely important for our students ability to obtain even partial athletic scholarships. The results will be very significant. If the results are good, we will continue. If they are not good, then we will have to reexamine what we are doing. We will know in January 2017.

 

November, 2016

 
As the year is drawing to a close, we continue to make significant progress playing baseball and developing the school. In December, four of the AVRS Secondary School students will be attending the Major League Elite training program in South Africa during the early 10 days. Two of the players are in S4 and are about to turn 16. The other two are in S3 and are about to turn 14 and 15. Are they our best players? Not necessarily. But they are players that the Major League Baseball people responsible for this program invited when they stopped by at the school in July for a couple of hours. Even though they will be among the youngest at this program, we believe they will be making a significant impression on the scouts there. We do know that Cincinnati will be watching very closely one of the players they liked in January of this year when they spent two days watching our young players. He is one of the four selected to go next month.
We have been advised that Major League Baseball will be hosting a continent wide meeting for the heads of the respective African baseball federations in Kampala around the 10th of December. Another item that is beginning to show that Uganda is on its way to becoming the center of African Baseball.

 

On this Saturday, November 11, 2016 the AVRS student team will be playing their last two games of the year in the Uganda adult baseball league supported by a charity based in Japan. This will bring them to a total of 12 games spread over 10 months. If they win both, they are definitely the champs. Right now they are 9 wins and 1 loss where everyone they play is on the average several years older than everyone of our players. We are also the only team that will play two games every time they play as the other teams only play one because they use only one pitcher, where we use at least two pitchers for each game and sometimes three for each game.

We are in the final stages of bringing a team of players from the school to spend about 10 days playing many games here in the U.S. We expect this program to be played in the early part of August 2017, based around the Toms River area of New Jersey. We are also trying to expand that visit to play some RBI teams in the Cincinnati area.

Unfortunately, under the new interpretation of Little League rules, they have declared that the AVRS school will not be allowed to participate in any Little League tournaments since we have students at the school from all over the country. They want us to only allow players from Kampala to play, which we refuse to do as that would be unfair to all the other students from the rest of Uganda. They have little idea about how schools in Uganda operate.

On January 9, 2016 the Little League complex will be hosting the first annual Uganda National Baseball Championship for secondary school teams of S1 and S2 students. We expect in January 2018 to be hosting this tournament and one for the next level up. That is teams of S3 and S4 students. We expect eight to be playing in the double elimination tournament. We expect two games being played starting at 10AM and two games each afternoon at 2PM. The Uganda Commissioner of Sports will cover the transportation costs of the traveling schools and a trophy. Uganda Little League will be housing and feeding all the players and coaches.

Also starting on January 9 will be running our eight annual two week coaches training clinic. We expect around 60 coaches to be attending. The program is by invitation only as Uganda Little League covers every ones housing and feeding costs. All they have to do is come to the complex. This program has been a major contributor to the expansion of baseball in Uganda over the recent years and we expect it to continue to do this in the future.

This year, as the AVRS school starts its' fifth year, two major components are being added to the school program. A young American from the U.S. is coming over as a volunteer to set up a film production school for all our students. In about 6 to 12 months you will be able to see a movie written, produced, directed, acted, edited and distributed by the students of the school. This will be the first film school in Uganda and we hope you will see a number of their productions in the future. They will also be using the new Pavilion where theatrical productions of various play rights will be preformed, possibly including plays written and acted in by the students.

The final touch will be a musical band that will be developed amongst the students starting with the new school year in January. Will it be a marching band? We are going to be working to that as the next step. As we indicated earlier, lots of things are going on.

Keep watching this web site, because we expect to be putting on videos of some of the baseball games, softball games, basketball games and soccer games that are being played at the school. We also expect to post some theatrical productions on the web site. If you would like to assist in some way, we would welcome you to the school.

 

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January, 2017

 
The start of what may turn out to be a very special year brings a number of significant events in Uganda and at the AVRS Secondary School. As most people already know, we will once again run our two week coach's clinic starting on January 8. Once again, we expect to host only the 60 or so invited baseball and softball coaches to attend. Others will be turned away. What is different about this year clinic is that it will host a double elimination tournament for 8 secondary school all star teams from all over Uganda. The teams will be made up of S1-S2 students who actually are attending their school and will be playing for the Ugandan Sports Commissioner's Trophy. This is the very first tournament of this kind and we are expecting it to rapidly expand in future years. Next year, the plans are for the tournament is add a program for S3-S4 students and we will host next January two National Tournaments. While only eight schools will be coming to the National Championship Tournaments, we expect many schools to begin competing for the title, but they will eventually have to qualify for the National Tournaments by going to and winning regional tournaments. That is the future. Will we get there? We will find out as the years go by.
What is also in the future is what happens to the secondary school girls. We expect to work on their National Tournaments during the year so that we host girls National Championship tournaments each year in the future.

All of this is being done to expand baseball and softball programs to all parts of the country with the goal of producing many very good ball players by the year 2020 to make up a Ugandan Olympic Baseball team and a girls Softball team. The ultimate is to make it to the Tokyo Olympic games of 2020. Is it realistic? Yes. Currently, I believe that the young players of Uganda, meaning those just turning age 16 are some of the best young players in Africa. They are growing and playing which is something that was not being done before. The various programs are beginning to understand that we need to develop young pitchers, hitters and fielders and the only way this is going to happen is by playing many competitive games. Based upon the young players that we are now sending to the MLB South Africa elite camp program, more of those better players are in Uganda than any where else, and Major League Baseball is realizing that. We just need to keep growing and through the Uganda Sports Commissioner's program, many more are going to be developed as the programs expand.

The major plan for this year at the AVRS school is to bring the older boys to the U.S. during the first week of August. We do know that we will bring the team to play about 12 or so games during 7 days in Toms River N.J. They will be playing among the best young U.S. players as a show case for College Coaches who hopefully will consider offering them baseball scholarships to play on their teams at their respective colleges. They are not going to offer any scholarships unless the coaches think they can help their teams win. Will they be good enough? We definitely think some will be, but hopefully all will be. If a couple of players do wind up in getting scholarships as a result of that visit, thousands of students will come out to play on school teams in Uganda. The importance of this trip cannot be appreciated unless you really know what happens in Uganda. In preparation, all our current S4 students are registered to take the SAT exam this January. Those scores will be traveling with the team that comes to New Jersey.

As everyone is aware, Uganda has basically been banned from participating in the Little League Regional Tournament that they would need to play in if they wanted to get to the respective World Series. At least the AVRS school is because we are too good supposedly and would constantly knock European teams from the World Series. Little League cannot afford for that to happen. As far as we are concerned, we will live with that by sending the boys directly to the U.S. for this August show case. The problem is what that does to the girls. We are thus looking for a program where the girls can come to the U.S. directly and compete so college coaches can see them play and possibly result in college scholarships for them. To come 8,000 miles for three days is hard to justify. We would love to come for at least 7 to 10 days of play. We would have no problem playing 3 or 4 games per day and we would have no problem playing one weekend followed by another tournament within a day or two of the first one. If anyone can help us with that, it would be greatly appreciated. Once again, they would all have their SAT scores with them, but would be looking for full scholarships for athletics, or for half athletics and half academic.

To help with our senior players, we are now instituting a film making program at the school. One of the side benefits of this program is the ability to film our students during our games at the school. We are trying to set up a program where we will be able to put clips of our players on the Internet and have athletic coaches at the colleges see them in action via these clips. This is what has been going on in recruiting athletes for a number of years, and it is time for us to try doing it also. We intend to do this in baseball, softball, soccer and running to start. We will eventually expand as our playing ability increases in volley ball, basketball and possibly other sports.

One of our friends of the girls team that went to the Little League World Series in Portland, Oregon in 2015 got married awhile back. It seems her husband works for a company that matches donations made to legally organized charities. While 303 Development Foundation Corp has been legally organized and compliant with all the laws since 2007, we are now officially registered with an organization that coordinates companies that match donations with charities registered with them. As of early December, 303 Development is now registered. If anyone knows of anyone working for a company that matches charitable donations, please let them know about us and hopefully they will support us in what we are doing.

On January 23, the AVRS school starts is fifth year of existence. This year sees the opening of the new arena for basketball, volley ball, badminton, performing arts, the start of a band program and a very large enclosed area for all kinds of events. The building obviously has a full stage for plays, dance, music concerts, and other activities. But what is also interesting is that it is expected to be the home for the Ugandan National Basketball team. The building has offices, a VIP box, and has two full size basketball courts. It is now known as the Pavilion. We will get pictures of the total finished building and of the ribbon cutting when it takes place in March.

 

March, 2017

 
As most people are aware, the National Championship for the S1-S2 program was held at the school on January 9 thru 13. We also ran our coaches tournament at the same time and beyond. The coaches were there from the early morning of January 9 thru January 20. We had the help of three long time assistants who help run the coaches clinic and coordinate the umpiring for the tournament. Two come from Canada and one from the U.S. It ran very well, including the end of clinic party that was held on Thursday evening, January 19, followed by the championship game between the two top coaches teams on Friday morning. We had our usual sixty coaches for the coaches clinic.

The championship tournament had eight teams. Several other teams were eliminated via regional tournaments. It was a double elimination tournament, but everyone played each of the four days regardless of their records. Two games were held at 10 in the morning and two at 2 in the afternoon. There were probably 5 very competitive teams at the tournament and three teams that were somewhat weaker. The top team was Luwero. They went through the tournament undefeated, but the games they played against AVRS and Lugazi were highly competitive in which anyone could have won. Since they played AVRS on Tuesday, that meant AVRS had to come our of the losers bracket by beating Lira on Wednesday and then Beating Soroti on Thursday morning and then beating Lugazi on Thursday afternoon. AVRS lost the afternoon game to Lugazi in the bottom of the eighth inning when they scored to break the tie. On Friday morning, Luwero broke a tie in the bottom of the next to last inning to walk away with the trophy supplied by the Uganda Sport Commissioner.

The tournament used pitch counts for all games. We allowed a strict limit of no more than 30 pitches, that person could pitch every day, 55 pitches required one days rest. 70 pitches required two days rest and or less required 3 days rest. 100 pitches and you were done for the day and for the next four days as a pitcher. It was strictly enforced during the entire tournament.

It was agreed by all the coaches present to work on expanding the program to the next level of S3-S4 students. Thus, next year we planning on hosting two National Championship tournaments. A committee of coaches was formed to set up some rules for these tournaments, especially regarding eligibility regarding age. In Uganda, even though you go to a government school, if you do not have money for books, uniform and some lunch money, you do not go to school until you have the money to pick up at the level you missed. Thus, it is possible to have a 17 or 18 year old in S1 where most students are 12 or 13. Thus the need for some kind of agreement. No one wants 17 or 18 year olds playing with 12 or 13 year olds.

Future:

 

Good and Bad. First the good. The AVRS school has been invited to send a team of our older players to come to the U.S. late July to early August. This will allow the team to play as part of Major League Baseball's RBI program in Cincinnati and also in the Black Sox Foundation program in Toms River New Jersey. We will bring 12 to 15 players with two or three coaches. We must arrive in Cincinnati by the evening of July 30. On the following three days, we will be expecting to play five games against other RBI teams competing in the RBI Championship Tournament. We will also have the opportunity to see a Cincinnati Major League Game during the evenings. On Thursday, we will travel to New Jersey where we will expect to be playing two games a day for seven days starting on the Saturday and going through to the following Friday, August 11. That weekend, we may be playing other RBI teams from Newark NJ and/or Philadelphia, possibly in the Trenton Thunder home Stadium. Those last two days are yet to worked out. The team will travel back to Uganda starting on the afternoon of August 14. We hope that these players will be seen by many college coaches and may be offered college scholarships to play at U.S. colleges. The players will have with them their SAT scores from the exams that they have taken earlier this year. Once again, or goal was to get at least half athletic and half academic to make a whole scholarship. If we get one, our past efforts will have been well worth it. If we get three and four scholarship offers, all I can say is "WOW"

During this trip, the young lady who is teaching film making and performing arts at the AVRS school will be traveling with the team with the goal of making a television documentary movie of the entire trip. That would make this trip very significant.

The bad part of what has happened in Uganda is the opportunity that I believe is being missed by the Uganda Baseball and Softball Federation (UBSA). There is an international girls under 19 softball tournament being held the last week of July in Clearwater, Florida. It required a $3000 deposit to be sent to them by February 28. AVRS girls softball team, even though they are no older than 14 and 15 years old, has beaten every softball team, regardless of age, who have been willing to play them over the past 2 years. They are without a doubt the best. If Uganda was to be represented in this program, they would have to represent Uganda and thus have the okay of UBSA. AVRS, since any Uganda softball team would be composed of mostly, if not all of the girls from the school, offered to pay all the expenses to get to this tournament and back. The cost of visas, airfare and hotels and meals was expected to exceed $30,000. The problem came about when UBSA decided that the AVRS female coaches could not go as part of the team and UBSA insisted to put in a male coach and two other strangers to coach this team. AVRS absolutely refuses to allow a Ugandan male coach to travel with these girls. None of these UBSA coaches ever had a team that won any competitive games in their life. The AVRS female coaches took the team when age 13 to win the Little League Regional Tournament in Poland in 2015 and also to the World Series in Portland, Oregon, where they became the only team from Europe or Africa to ever beat a US regional champion. They are the best softball coaches in Uganda and know all the girls and their ability. Thus trying to force coaches, especially a male coach who has never met the AVRS girls to suddenly become their coach is ridiculous. AVRS's offer to pay for the entire trip was thus rescinded, and thus, Uganda will probably not be represented at this July tournament. The major loses in this are the AVRS girl softball players as they will not have the chance to be seen by college coaches via this tournament.

We are now looking to bring this girls team to the U.S. to get them seen by college coaches. They would be eligible for college scholarships just as the boys are as they have also taken the SAT exam this year. If anyone can put together a program where we could play a tournament on one three day weekend and then the following weekend in the U.S., please let us know via this web site. It is only worth it if the girls can spend a full week playing games to come to the U.S. Not playing on a Monday thru Thursday may not be ideal, but if that is the only way to get seen by college coaches, then we would be willing to do it.

 

May, 2017

 
We now enter a busy time of year for the baseball/softball program at the Uganda Little League complex. Starting on May 6, the boys 11-12 year old championship for Uganda Little League will be decided by our annual eight team double elimination tournament. On May 12, we will do the same for the girls with eight teams being at the complex to contest for the 11-12 year old Uganda Little League girls championship via a double elimination tournament. All the Little League rules will be enforced regarding pitch limits and play requirements. The unfortunate thing about these two tournaments is that the winners are banned from participating in the formal Little League regional tournaments that lead to the respective World Series, thus the teams can only play for the Uganda title and can go no further. In our opinion, it comes down to sponsor money, or the fact that Little League International will lose European sponsorship if Africa keeps representing the Europe/Africa region. This is why we have been fighting for now over 10 years to get Little League International to have Africa as its own region with a regional tournament with the winners going to the respective World Series. According to Little League International, there are now many African countries participating in Little League, but none go to the European/Africa Regional Tournament.

On May 18, we will host two four team tournaments for the older players of both boys and girls. We have invited the so called best teams of each gender to round out two four team tournaments where each team will be playing two games a day for the first two with a championship game on the third day for boys and for girls. That means for May 18 and 19, there will be four games going on at the same time in the morning and also in the afternoon. The Little League complex in Uganda is the place to be to see softball or baseball on those two days.  On May 20, you are going to have to decide which championship game you want to see as both will be played at 10AM on that morning. For the first two days, we are going to have some busy umpires.

Early in June, we have an appointment at the U.S. Embassy to appear for the interview part of the U.S. visa application. This involves 14 players amongst our older boys. They are arriving in the U.S. early on July 30 in Philadelphia from where they will bus on to Cincinnati, arriving that evening. Why Philadelphia? Because the plane leaving Uganda that we could have possibly taken to Detroit via Amsterdam and bus down, had no more room for our traveling party of 19 as of early March. Booking groups out of Uganda during our summer is not always easy which we had learned several years ago. The boys expect to play a single game on the Monday in Cincinnati, two on Tuesday and two on Wednesday with teams playing in the RBI tournament. They will then bus to Toms River N.J. on Thursday where they expect to be playing two games per day from Saturday thru Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, August 11 and 12, they will be playing teams in Philadelphia before flying home on Monday, August 14. What is currently up in the air is what happens on Friday, August 4. We are trying to set up a showcase soccer demonstration as all these boys are also excellent soccer players and we are looking for athletic scholarships to any college or university to get them a good education and give them an opportunity to play under good coaching to hopefully enhance their skills.

The trip to the U.S. is very significant in several ways. Should some players be offered a full scholarship via entirely athletic or half athletic and half academic, that would have a huge impact on the number of students who would want to get to schools that offer a baseball program for students where they can develop their skills to possibly obtain college scholarships knowing that it is possible. We want to do the same thing for the girls in Uganda via softball or soccer or running.

 

The talent is in Uganda, the programs for the young participants are not there and we are working very hard to get a formal program working through the Uganda Commissioner of Sports and the Uganda Ministry of Education and Sports to develop these programs in the secondary schools. Major League Baseball recognizes that there is great potential for talented players coming from Uganda, but the youth programs need to be put in place to develop the young talent. Thus, if this team puts on a great performance via these showcase events in Cincinnati, New Jersey and Philadelphia, we may really kick start this program.

Mr. Bennett Shields of the Major League youth program is working very close with us on the team coming to the U.S. While we have been part of the RBI program for over two years, we have not been invited to participate in their annual tournaments for boys 18 and under, 15 and under and girls softball for 18 and under. The major problem that currently exists, no international teams are allowed to participate. Will this change? We are working on it for 2018. What we would like to see is a tournament like the Williamsport Pa. Little League Tournament. That is a six to eight team U.S. tournament and at the same time a six to eight team International Tournament, with the winners playing for the World Championship. This now fills an opening Little League has given to the RBI program since they have dropped their 18 and under tournaments for both boys and girls

 

July-August, 2017

 
May and June are always very busy periods for Uganda Little League. Having been banned from participating in Little League Regional Tournaments that they refuse to schedule in Africa, none the less, we continued holding our own Little League tournaments for boys and girls age 12 and under and for older boys and girls. We started in early May with our double elimination tournament for the boys first, followed by the girls. The quality of play has dramatically improved in a number of leagues. AVRS still won the championships in both the boys and the girls tournament, but the games are getting closer and the overall play is improving. The Gulu, Lira and Soroti programs held their own elimination tournament to try a cut down on the total cost of coming to the complex, and thus sent only the winner of the program to the complex.
In the older boys and girls program, AVRS did prevail in the boys program, but the girls tournament was in a 2-2 tie in the fourth inning when heavy rains came to end the game. Teams from Luwero are becoming very competitive with AVRS, while Lugazi is always putting together competitive teams.

In other baseball and softball news, the Uganda federation continues to try and run their program for the adults. They started in March of this year trying to have teams from various parts of the country play about one game per month for a total of 12 games. They were trying to do the same for the girls in softball. The Japanese charity gives them money to run this league. We refuse to travel to play only one game, so when we do play, we play against two different teams on that day. The girls softball program lasted until the first week and then no one wanted to play any more. I believe that the main reason was that the AVRS girls destroyed the supposedly two best teams the one day we actually played back in March. Now evidently, no other softball programs exist in Uganda for older girls.

The boys program does continue. There are seven teams playing in the boys section. In the first six games that we have played in, four ended with us winning by mercy rule. The only games that ended after 9 innings was the games we played against Lugazi and Luwero. We won both of those games by a margin of 6 runs each, but they are somewhat competitive because they are running legitimate Little League programs feeding into their adult teams and they are being run by coaches who care about teaching kids how and play and developing their talents. Those two teams contain a lot of young teenage players. The other 4 teams are mostly Federation people with mostly 20 something players, and winning there by 21-2, or 10-0 or 14-3 in 4.5 innings accomplishes nothing. But this is what the federation wants to do. Unfortunately, most of these games are played at the field the Japanese built several years ago, and it is deteriorating, and also getting dangerous. The Japanese know this, and are trying to get money to fix it, but have not been successful. In summary, the only place the girls can play competitive games is amongst themselves at the complex. The boys are the only team in this so called adult league undefeated at 6 and 0 as this is writing having played half way through the 12 game schedule.

A very Sad Note: In late May, we lost the most memorable of all umpires. Chan, who came from Taiwan about 9 years ago to teach baseball to Ugandans and umpired all our tournament games in January and May, and also umpired and coached all the boys and girls at the AVRS school and lived at the school, passed away unexpectedly. He will always be remembered at the school and by many others as the only umpire that would umpire baseball games with only a mask. The four championship games that were part of our four May tournaments, all the umpires agreed that he should be given the horror of umpiring them from behind the plate. I had the pleasure of having him as my partner for the older girls tournament and thus worked with him as a partner on the last 4 games he umpired.

On July 29, a team of 14 players from the AVRS school will be coming to the U.S. to play a number of games. The team will consist of boys no older than 16. We cannot thank the U.S. embassy enough for how nicely the team was treated in obtaining their U.S. visas. Their only request was to send them pictures, and an invite to the ribbon cutting ceremonies when we open the new arena at the complex in a couple of months.

Last May, we were invited to come for a 7 day program in Toms River that would be held starting on August 5 where the boys would play 2 games per day for the seven days. They would be housed and fed by the local people upon their arrival. In Late 2016, Major League Baseball found out about this and asked if we would be willing to come a few days earlier and travel to Cincinnati, Ohio to play a number of games against teams in their RBI program. Uganda has been a member of the RBI program and we know they run tournaments for boys 18 and under, 15 and under and for girls softball 18 and under. Our problem is no foreign teams are allowed to participate as we cannot participate in a qualifying tournament. While the tournaments are being held in Cincinnati, we would be able to play some teams there and possibly go to the championship game at the Major League Stadium while in Cincinnati. We agreed to do this and now we are trying to work with Major League Baseball on getting them to allow International teams to play in a true World Series of RBI teams for boys and girls. Can this happen in 2018? We do not know that at this time, but Uganda would certainly love to participate and we could use the Uganda Commissioner of Sports National Championship tournaments, held each year, as qualifying games. This would really expand baseball and softball in the Ugandan Secondary Schools much faster than currently and develop a lot more athletic talent in Uganda. Along those lines, the Commissioner had 11 head masters who are serious in developing baseball and/or softball in their schools come to the Uganda Little League complex to obtain donated equipment. On the day they came, we gave out 20 sets of catchers equipment 200 bats, 240 gloves, 20 dozen baseballs, 12 dozen softballs 70 helmets, and believe it or not, over 700 tennis balls. We have players play with tennis balls when we do not have gloves or helmets or catchers equipment to distribute. Our biggest needs are catcher equipment and gloves, then come softballs and baseballs and helmets.

Back to team travel. The team will leave Uganda on July 29 and arrive in Philadelphia on Sunday morning July30. They then travel to Cincinnati and play a game on Monday, two on Tuesday and two on Wednesday before traveling to Toms River N,J, on Thursday. On Friday, August 4, they will work out in Toms River, take part in a soccer showcase and attend a Trenton Thunder game that night. On Saturday, the Toms River program starts and they will be playing games there through Friday, August 11. On Saturday and Sunday, August 12 and 13, they will be playing games in Philadelphia again as part of the RBI program. On Monday morning, August 14, they will board a plane in Philadelphia to head back to Uganda with an afternoon arrival at Entebbe airport. All these events are what is called showcase events. The main purpose is to show their talents and hope to convince college coaches to give them scholarships to play baseball or soccer, or both, at their colleges or junior colleges. Every Major League team knows they are coming and will certainly have scouts at these events. The most important thing for Uganda is to get the scholarships as that will bring more government support for developing athletes in the school program in Uganda. Getting an education is something that no one can take away, while making it to a Major League "is very difficult, if not almost impossible."  Our goal is to get coaches of all sports to learn that there is great athletic talent in Uganda and they need to begin to recruit there.

 

September, 2017

 

We have had a very interesting two months with a number of significant things happening. In July, 2017 we had the opportunity to meet with people at the Pennington School. A very highly rated primary and secondary boarding school. We met with the dean, who is also the coach of the currently rated top high school soccer team in the country. As a result of those discussions, we may be able to place a student, or two, or possibly more at the school at no cost to the student. The school is doing this now for a number of students from foreign countries and would like to include Uganda. Naturally, they are only interested in top students who are tops in academics and good athletes. They are interested in both boys and girls. Their goal is after a year or two, they can place these students at good colleges on full scholarships while bringing diversity to the school. We think this can become reality starting with the September, 2018 class. A similar program may start at a private school in near by Pennsylvania. This is not a boarding school, but housing would be taken care of at a near by home for a couple of boys and possibly a couple of girls. Once again, they want top students who are also good athletes. There goal is the same. Have winning teams that can feed the student/athletes into good colleges and universities on full scholarships. Once again, the plan is to start in September 2018. As a result of these two possible programs, a person will be coming in March to evaluate our education program and meet the potential student/athletes so that they can be placed into the proper education cycle when they come to the U.S. at these schools.

July 30, 2017:

 

14 baseball players and two coaches landed in Philadelphia to start a 10 hour bus ride to Cincinnati, Ohio where they would be a special invited team to play baseball for several days at the invitation of Major League RBI program. The team played two games on July 31, two on August 1 and two more on August 2. We played against teams of boys about to be seniors in high school or who had just graduated. No one knew how we would compare to the six teams we played against. We soon found out, as no game was close as the Uganda boys dominated in every way. In fielding, hitting, running and pitching. In the six games, I believe the total runs given up by the 12 pitchers we used was 3 runs while we scored at least 60 or more. The RBI people realized that they needed to get better teams to play against us. The boys had a great introduction to playing in the U.S. They stayed at a top hotel and had buffet breakfasts, lunch and dinners at every meal. Eat and drink as much as you want of what ever you want at each meal. A great experience of what professional ball players go through in regard to long bus rides and playing many games.

The next team we played against involved with the RBI program was on August 12 where we played against the senior RBI team for Philadelphia, which was supposed to be more competitive. Originally scheduled for nine innings regardless of the score, the game ended after seven with Uganda ahead at 16-2. At the request of a Baltimore Orioles scout who had come to see the boys play, we used a new pitcher each inning. A Philadelphia Phillies area scout put the players through a couple of timed drills prior to the game and was very impressed. None of our players were older than 16, What does Major League Baseball do with us now is very much up in the air. We hope that next year we will be able to participate in the actual RBI tournaments for boys 18 and under, 15 and under and for girls 18 and under. The only thing we know at this time is that Major League Baseball wants to bring the boys back again next year, and also the girls. What they do next year we will soon find out.

August 4, 2017:

 

The boys traveled to the Pennington school for a soccer showcase. Remember, this is the top rated soccer program in the U.S. at this moment. The coach put them through some drills and then split them up and added a player of his own to play a soccer game, which was being videoed which would eventually be sent to some college soccer coaches. Who knows, I am sure a soccer or baseball scholarship that gives the players a chance to play at a high level and an education at the same time is of equal value. The American football coach at the school was also present. Upon being told that the boys had not seen an American football game, he brought out a football and ran the boys through a couple of drills. After seeing them in the drills, he wished he good have a couple of the boys on his team now. He also gave a brand new football to a player he thought would help him win a championship this year if he played American football instead of soccer. After the show case, the players went to a minor league baseball game at the Trenton Thunder. Prior to the game Reggie Jackson, a roaming coach for the New York Yankees, and a baseball hall of fame player, came over and spoke to each of the players, one at a time. Many pictures were taken of this.

August 6, 2017:

 

The team began playing games in Toms River where they were housed by local families. Once again, they demonstrated their superior baseball talents in two games on Sunday, rained out on Monday, played a game on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. At the same time, the families were taking them all over south Jersey, including the famous Jersey Shore and the Atlantic Ocean. They all had a wonderful time and the families that hosted many of them are inviting them to come back for Christmas and again next year.

Upon their return to Uganda, the Uganda Federation for Baseball and Softball was running tournaments in baseball and softball for secondary schools at a location east of Jinja. The program was supposed to run from August 26 thru August 31. The AVRS school swept all the games by lopsided scores. One was 26-0. The tournament ended on August 29 with AVRS taking home both the baseball and softball trophies.

 

Our concern before we went to these tournaments was that they would be a waste of time and money. Our fears came true. The good secondary schools from the north of the country that are part of the Uganda Commissioner's Secondary program, to the best of my knowledge, did not come as the costs to participate in travel expense and food were too high, It is unfortunate that the Federation seems unable to run any competitive programs that develop baseball and softball in Uganda. The future of baseball and softball is through the secondary school program in the Commissioner's program which we will continue to support and we hope all others will join in supporting. The Federation fails to encourage people to play many competitive games. They do a lot of talk and bring a lot of training programs to supposedly train coaches and players, but fail to get people to play the games. The expenses that allows trainers from outside the country to come and run training programs in Uganda turns out to be a waste of money since no one follows up to find out if anyone plays on a regular bases.

 

November, 2017

 

The past couple of months have seen some very positive developments at the Uganda Little League Complex. In regard to playing baseball and softball, nothing much has changed. The boys and girls still remain amongst the very best teams in all of Africa, if not the best. The federation's adult league finished up this past month as far as the AVRS school was concerned, as they played their last double header and won both games. They finished the season undefeated once again. The girls if you remember, started the season with two massive victories and as a result, no one wanted to play them anymore and the softball league disappeared. The federation did hold a secondary school program for several days in the eastern part of the country about two months ago, where once again the boys and the girls came back with all the trophies and were undefeated. A number of the girls games ended with scores of 26 to nothing. Our problem with baseball and softball is that there is no competition other than when we play our selves at the school. Traveling to play in federation tournaments become expensive and accomplish basically nothing in regard to development of talent. We are questioning the worth of constantly playing in games that end with us mercy ruling the opponents.

The future events at the school does look promising in some ways, but is proving a problem in other ways. On November 18 and 19, we will be hosting in the guest house two scouts from the San Diego Padres baseball team. While they do have an interest in one of our young players, they are coming to learn about what we are doing at the school regarding developing baseball talent. They have been informed that we would very much like to see our players getting scholarships to play at American Colleges and Universities, they believe they can work that out with our players via their connections with some schools in the San Diego area, or in the future as part of a contract if they were to sign a particular player.

The problem we have is obtaining scholarships for our student/athletes. So far, despite promises, especially one that encouraged us to come to the U.S. with a team last August, no offers have materialized. The trip to N.J. attracted few, if any college coaches. The only attractions that trip drew was from the Major League Baseball aspect and a couple of other opportunities that we were aware of before the trip to New Jersey. We continue to work on those with the scouts from the Cincinnati Reds that were here in 2016 and other people who know about our program. We hope we may still obtain a couple of scholarships for the school year starting in September 2018. We will keep everyone informed.

In January, we will once again host our 9th annual coaches clinic while at the same time hosting, in conjunction with the Uganda Minister of Sports, the annual Secondary School National Championships in baseball and softball. We have scheduled the first girls softball tournament for January 8, to be followed by the second annual boys baseball tournament to start on January 15. Both tournaments will be double elimination, but every team will play at least four games, win or lose during the 5 day tournaments. While these tournaments are going on, we expect to be hosting some visitors from Major League Baseball who are coming to Uganda to evaluate athletic talent in the country and what we are planning to do with developing it. These visitors may also involve bringing a team of boys and a team of girls to the U.S. in August 2018 as part of the baseball and and softball RBI tournaments. At this moment, how they participate in the RBI tournaments is still up in the air.

In regard to the breast cancer medical clinic: Things are moving along at a steady pace. As you probably already know, the FDA has approved the Ultra Sound imaging device that is a major breakthrough in breast cancer diagnosis. Out goal is to set up a clinic here in Uganda which we anticipate will be the prototype for all of Africa. Our responsibility before the end of this year was to make sure we had enough transmission ability to send the images we produce here in Uganda back to the U.S. That has been obtained in a letter to the company guaranteeing that it is currently available in Uganda at the location where we intend to start the clinic. The companies responsibility was to make the instrument easier to maintain so that the company would not need to send people to Africa to trouble shoot problems. Now, in a meeting scheduled for November 17, the African Clinic will hold a board meeting to lay out the schedule of our next activities. for 2018. We will be sending our radiologist to California sometime in the first quarter to learn about the set up of the clinic there and its operation and to inform the company that we will be able to appropriately treat what we diagnose in Uganda. Once that is accomplished, we will be sending people to be trained on taking the machine apart and putting it back together to make sure we can trouble shoot, maintain and repair without involving any company people coming to Uganda. It is expected that this may take as much as a month in California for people who have an appropriate instrument background. Then the next problem is getting the money to set it up and operate the clinic. We know where it will be located, now we just have to do what we need to do in 2018 to get it operating before the third or fourth quarter of 2018.

 

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January, 2017

The past two months have been extremely eventful months with many significant things happening in a number of areas.

November marked the last month of the 2017 school year at the AVRS school We had received a request from Mr. Chris Kemp of the San Diego Padres asking to come and see one of our young players that he had seen in the 2015 Little League World Series. It was agreed that the best time would be the weekend of November 18 and 19. According to Chris, he was at a program in Florida where he was told about Uganda's visit to Cincinnati and it was suggested to him that he might want to see more than one player. Thus he and Trevor Schumm arrived at the Entebbe airport on the night of November 17 and watched the boys play four games on Saturday and two more on Sunday morning. They were impressed enough to express a desire to return in March of 2018.

Late Sunday morning, both Chris and Trevor took part in a meeting with the Uganda Commissioner of Sports, the Director of the Justice Department, one of our AVRS coaches, and myself to explain to them what we were doing about baseball in the secondary schools in Uganda. They were impressed with the plan and wanted to assist in making it come to fruition. It was agreed that they would go to their owner and to the International Scouts Organization to push for financial help in regard to equipment and other means. I would also approach the people I know in Major League Baseball with the same message to hopefully organize a ground swell of support.

On to the winter meetings in Orlando Florida in early December. The message of above were carried to several other teams. One major one was the LA Dodgers. Their President, Mr. Stan Kasten spent some time with us and offered to do something based upon what he heard from his people that he decided to send to Uganda. He is now sending Galen Carr, LA Player Development, and David Finley to Uganda in January to learn as much as they can and report back to him with their recommendations. They are now coming on January 15 for several days to scout the young players that will be playing in the Uganda National Baseball Championships for the young secondary school players. This is the program that is run jointly with the Uganda Sports Commissioner and Uganda Little League Baseball, and now is beginning to expand rapidly, but we have a problem with getting the needed equipment into Uganda to allow the schools that want to join the program to be properly equipped. This is one of the places where we need help.

Prior to our visitors from the LA Dodgers coming, Mr. Bill Bavasi Jr of the Major League Baseball International Scouting Division is bringing two MLB international scouts to Uganda. They are expected to arrive on January 13 and stay through January 19, the duration of the National Baseball Championship Tournament for the younger secondary school players. Once again, this is a unique opportunity to demonstrate the needs of this program and the potential the program has to produce talented baseball players in the near future.

Education program: We have work to do here, but we are making progress. I was invited to a program that Hillside College was running in New York City early in November. At this event, I had the opportunity to speak to their Director of External Relations for Athletics about our student/athletes at the AVRS school. He was very much interested and I was invited to come to the college to talk further. That happened on December 19. I brought a lot of data with me from running speeds of players to SAT scores of our older students. The conclusion, the school would love to have as many as four of our students each year on full scholarships, including room and board, but they need to attain a combined score of 1200 on the SAT exam in English and Math. I was informed that they have been bringing in a number of Kenyans via a program that is being run in Kenya for underprivileged females. They do this by working diligently on taking the SAT exams several times. Something we need to work on very hard. As most people may know, Hillsdale is one of the better academic schools in the U.S. They are also a good division II athletic school and want athletically talented students, where the students of AVRS would fit in.  One other outcome of this visit was a meeting with the Hillsdale track coach. They are in the process of building a new outdoor track closer to their indoor track building. Both these tracks will be fit for International meets with electronic timing. I was shown the equipment we would need and how it is hooked up to underground cables for meets at the indoor track facility. The track coach will forward to me a copy of the plans for their new outdoor track with the requirements for the proper surface in the near future so we can then build our own track suitable for International Competition.

The last part of the education program involves possibly sending several students to several secondary schools here for one or two years to work on sports and SAT exams as fully sponsored students. We were required to provide the syllabuses for our classes and they were approved. We are working on trying to get a number of these students accepted into these schools, once again, because they are excellent athletes that should be awarded full student/athlete scholarships to good colleges after the one or two years at these secondary schools. Once again, these schools want to be competitive in various interscholastic sports, and our students can do that while the schools prepare them for four years of study in the math and sciences at good colleges here in the United State.

 

March 2018

Things in Uganda just keep on happening. Some good things and some not so good things. On Wednesday evening, March 21,, we were notified that Uganda RBI, the AVRS School was officially accepted into the 2018 RBI program. This means it is now official and we can say it. Uganda RBI is now going to participate in the Caribbean Regional RBI Tournament in Vero Beach Florida for three different teams. The boys 18 and under, the boys 15 and under and the girls 18 and under softball team. We have submitted our signed statement that we will adhere to all the rigorous requirements of the application. The first games will be on June 28, 2018 with a champion determined in each program on July 1, 2018. Should any of our teams win the tournament, they would participate in their respective RBI World Series in Minneapolis, Minnesota from August 5 - 10 for baseball, and August 11 - 16 for girls softball.

We will now begin to plan for the days after the Florida tournament. We hope to spend an additional several days in Florida to play a number of other games over the following several days before returning to Uganda around July 10 or so.

Football (soccer) The annual program leading up to a Ugandan national secondary school champion in soccer began with an area tournament for the AVRS school on March 9 & 10. The people running this tournament demonstrated how corrupt secondary school programs can be in Uganda and how little sense of responsibility for the welfare of the students some adults have in Uganda. We were told to be at a particular school at 9AM to check into the tournament. At the time, no one had any knowledge about what games we would play or who we would be playing, but we had to have the entry fee in two days before. By 10AM, we knew we would have to play against all the teams in our pool of six teams. The top two ranked in our pool would play the top two teams in the other pool on Saturday. We would play 5 games in two halves of 15 minutes each on Friday on one field and the other pool would do the same on another field. The first game did not start until 11:20. We did not play in the first game, nor the second. The second game did not start until 12:30. We played the third game because our opponent didn't arrive at the field until 1:45 with no penalty. At 3PM, the next game started, and then we played again at 4:00. Sat until 6:00 when we played again.

 

Why so long between games, no one knows, but everyone just sat for literally 30 minutes doing nothing between games. We were at the school from 9AM almost to 7PM. No food, no benches, no water other than what we brought and no idea in the morning as to how long this would take. We were then told, we needed to come back at 9AM on Saturday. Over the time from 9 until 4:30PM, we played two more teams in our pool and did not finish until after 4:30PM. again, we played two 15 minute halves in each game. We did not lose, and the last team we played only lost to us, so we finished first in our pool, and they finished second in our pool. Now the shock that we now had to come back at 8AM on Sunday. A day that was not planned on and now we had to scramble to arrange for the bus to bring us back. A one and one half day tournament was now being turned into a three day tournament at the last moment.

Okay, we would come back and play the semi final and championship games on Sunday. When we arrived early Sunday morning, we were told that now we are going to play a quarter final round and a semi and then the championship game. We ask why a sudden quarterfinal. Not getting an answer, we saw why. The home school would not be in the semi finals, but would be in the quarterfinals at position 4 in the 6 team pool. Now the games were at least two 30 plus minute halves. What was unique about this quarterfinal was that the home team at number 4 in its bracket got to play number 4 in the other bracket, while 2 in one pool played 3 in the other pool, and we being number 1 played number 1 in the other pool. Not only that, but we played the second game of the two games on each field, so our game ended at about noon, and then we were required to play the semifinal at about 12:30. No time to eat, but only to get a drink of water. Now the biggest surprise. The four teams from our pool beat all of the four teams from the other pool. Thus we expected as number one, we would play number 4 in our semi. We were all prepared to do that when we were suddenly told that we were going to play number 2 and 4 would play 3. Needless to say, we did protest, but were told "Too bad". We lost that game 2-1 and then were told, at 3PM that they wanted us to play a consolation game. Why? For three days, we were at that field for over 9 hours, 8 hours and now already 7 hours. We had played over 120 minutes on this day and our kids had not eaten a decent meal in three days. No one plays a game, rests for 2 hours, plays again and rests for another 2 hours or so only to play again. Do much the same the next day and then play 120 minutes plus on a third day only to appease the home team, only to play another 90 minutes and claim they care of the kids welfare. These people running this tournament should be put in jail for child abuse.

The school is back running as of early February and will run to the end of April. We have a significant challenge this year as the first year students have a number that have a hard time understanding and reading English. This is going to be an interesting problem, but we intend to work very hard, and with every ones help, we expect to bring them around and make them good students. It will require a lot of hard work on everyone's part to make it work.

This year, the S1,S2,and S3 students are together in athletics. They give us four teams of boys and four of girls consisting of about 14 players each. The S4,S5 and S6 students are together, but here we have only four teams of about 9 or 10 players each. As a result, we have four teams of the older and four of the younger in each of two leagues of boys and two of girls. We will play our usual 3 or 4 baseball and softball games per week and 2 or 3 soccer games per week during the school terms.

On the first weekend in March, the boys played the first double header in the adult league. We are one of the four so called best teams which we will only play this year, while five other teams play in a so called weaker division. The games ended due to mercy rules of 10-0 and 12-2. We gave up 2 hits in the first game and 1 hit in the second. A couple of bad errors allowed the only hit to score and a hit batter to score. Dennis, the catcher in the first game and the right fielder in the second had a great day. Picked off a runner at second base in the first while getting a double and triple against the fence, and a single, along with a home run over the center field fence, the only ball that people have ever seen clear the fence at this field, and another double and single. Every time he swung, the ball was hit solidly and on a line to all fields.

The arena is finally back on schedule that will see it being finished with the ribbon cutting taking place on June 10, 2018. It will be one year late, but will now allow us to put into place a good basketball program along with volley ball and even netball. It will be a major addition as we can use it from 7AM to 10PM regardless of weather. With its full stage, it will also be used for many other programs which will also allow us to introduce a possible 40 or 50 piece marching band, and certainly a stage group of dancers and singers. The singers are already there and the band instruments have been at the school for over a year now, just waiting for the arena to be finished.

 

July 2018

It has been a long time between updates on this page and so many things have happened. The school is nearing the end of its second semester as this is being written. We have had a number of discussions with our head master about some changes we need to make in how the school runs academically. Several meetings were held with the teachers in mid May about opportunities that are available to us that would require changes in how and what we teach. Everyone is committed to making some changes. The main changes are how we teach English and the need to work on "Reading Comprehension", and how we also teach math. The reasons for these changes is to work on improving our students SAT scores. In addition to the math and English changes, we are now also instituting classroom work on taking SAT exams. This will assist us in obtaining U.S. scholarships.

The arena is now mostly complete. The floor, which had held things up for many months is now installed. The only item left to do is to install the bleachers. That will be done over the next couple of weeks. The last question here is "When will the Ribbon Cutting" ceremony take place.

I am told that the head of the Uganda Football Federation finally came to visit the complex. He was very much surprised by what he saw and duly impressed. He has now vowed to work with us on binging International Soccer programs to the school to develop players and other things. We still have a long way to go with our facilities, but we are getting there.

In June, we have reached formal agreement with a very close neighboring school for Dentistry and Medical Practices being run by an American Dentist who is a native of Uganda. This school only opened about three years ago. They want to use our ball fields to have their student/faculty soccer team practice on three evenings per week. In addition, it will give their team and our teams an opportunity to occasionally play friendly, competitive games against each other. In turn, they will give every student health examinations, dental exams and treatment free of charge every semester. In addition, it gives our students an opportunity to learn about and possibly enroll in this school as a career choice.

Little League:

In early May, we ran our usual Little League Baseball and Softball tournaments with eight teams participating in each double elimination tournament. You could not miss the huge increase in the ability level of all the teams, especially in the girls program. Each team had windmill pitching with some speed. I certainly believe that the seventh place team this year would have been playing for the Championship only one or two years ago. The AVRS teams did win both tournaments, but many of the games were very competitive.

In regard to Little League, a meeting of all the program coaches and directors were held during the tournament time, and it was agreed that Uganda Little League would only concentrate on the age 12 and under in baseball and softball. Each Little League would work with the secondary schools in their area to feed the Little League graduates into the Secondary School program being coordinated by Uganda Little League and the Commissioner of Sports. At the urging of Little League International, we have chartered all the Uganda Little Leagues that want to follow Little League Charter rules and organize to participate in Little League Tournaments. With this in mind, the AVRS school will no longer charter as a little league as we are not going to be allowed to play in any tournaments as a chartered member. Thus the school will be a place that runs the Uganda Tournaments, but does not participate as a chartered Little League in the tournaments.

RBI Program:

In late June, AVRS school sent three teams to Vero Beach Florida. A boys team of 18 and under, a boys team of 15 and under and a girls softball team of 18 and under. While the older boys team oldest player was 17 and the girls oldest player was 16, all played well and demonstrated that our programs are competitive on an International Level. The 15 and under boys team won their tournament and will now be playing for the Championship against 7 other teams from the U.S. starting in the first full week in August. That tournament will take place in Minneapolis. We were the first program from a foreign country to participate in this program. Several scouts were able to see our players and a number were very impressed by the talent exhibited.

In mid July, I was invited to Los Angeles to meet with Stan Kasten, his GM, and several other people involved with scouting for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Based upon earlier discussions and a visit to Uganda by Galen Carr and David Finley, the Dodgers want to do something to advance Baseball Development in Uganda. The discussions lasted a couple of hours. The Dodgers recognize the talent potential in Uganda and also the facilities and goals of the AVRS school. In summary, it was agreed that we would work together to advance the goals of the school and what we are doing with the Commissioner of Sports in getting Baseball into a number of secondary schools, so that it becomes a major sport for Uganda. If we are to follow the guide lines that the Commissioner and AVRS have been working towards for the past several years, more than just the AVRS school may become participants in the RBI program, basically, because each school in the program is required to basically meet the same standards that RBI requires of four teams at each age level playing a number of games at each school.

The Dodgers recognize that Uganda needs baseball equipment as none is sold in Uganda. They have agreed to assist in helping us in obtaining that equipment so that more people can actually play the game at many more schools. They have also told me that they will be coming to Minnesota in August to watch our players. They were in Vero Beach and were very impressed by what they saw. Discussions with the Dodgers will be on going over the next several months, and with possibly more visits to Uganda in the future.

 

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.

 

November 2018:

 

Progress is continuing to be made at the school. In the next couple of days, there will be a significant meeting that will take place between the AVRS school, the Uganda Commissioner of Sports and three members of the Los Angels Dodgers. This meeting will take place on Tuesday, November 6. It was planned over two months ago. The representative of the LA Dodgers are coming to inform the Commissioner about what the Dodgers are planning to do to enhance the development of baseball and softball in Uganda. Currently, no information is being discussed publicly, and will only be make known after the meeting. The one thing that can be made public is that the Dodgers will be doing a number of things at the AVRS Secondary School starting January 2019, and continuing on for a number of years, depending upon how successful 2019 turns out to be. This activity, along with the education aspect of the school, potentially will make it the most unique school in the World.

November marks the end of the school year in Uganda. As such, our first group of students to enter the school in January 2013 will be taking their last exams and will be leaving the school to hopefully advance their education at various universities in 2019. One of our students will be advancing his education in the United States. Based upon the baseball talents he displayed on the trip to Florida in June and in Minneapolis in August, he was invited to spend two weeks at a special program in early October. While there, a college baseball coach has offered him a full scholarship to attend his college and play baseball for the school starting in January 2019. While our goal was to get a number of our students scholarships to attend Universities based upon their athletic and academic abilities, he is the first one to do that at a U.S. college.

This being November, the AVRS school has once again visited the north country in our quest to find good students who can potentially do well academically and athletically. They will help make up the class that will start at the AVRS school this January. This time we sent two coaches and a teacher to evaluate the applicants. We fell that this incoming class will be much better then some prior ones. We will find out over the next six years with the help of the LA Dodgers.

This coming January, we will once again be hosting our January tournaments for the best Secondary School baseball teams from the S1-S3 students and the best softball teams for students S1-S6. This year, we expect to be adding a tournament for the S4-S6 boys. This will be the first one for the older boys. We will announce the dates and tournament order in the very near future. All three tournaments must be finished by January 21, the first day of classes at the AVRS school.

 

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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.

 

March 2019:

 

As I write this, the new school term is in its 6th week. In early January, the first of the two Dodger coaches scheduled to be at the school arrived. On the 15th, he was followed by the two others. They saw what changes were made at the request of the Dodgers and were very happy to see that what they were told would be done had been done. During their first week, they asked for the batting cages and pitching area be covered and a carpet installed over the cement floor to protect the baseballs. Arrangements were made to get this done, but first of the 11 pallets and the container had to be cleared so they could be delivered. The 11 pallets the Dodgers shipped air freight arrived and were cleared in a matter of three days. The many boxes of equipment was delivered to the complex and unloaded. It took the container until early February before we could get that cleared. The amount of money it took, and the time it took was unbelievable. The cost was three times the invoice value, but this is what happens in Uganda when you are not a big shipper of containers. Either pay the fee, or lose everything.

Needless to say, the batting cages were erected, carpets put down, pitching machines set up, and everything is now functioning, including the weight room. When school started, the new schedule was put into effect which has all the students playing sports during the afternoon, with everyone involved for 2.5 hours each school day and a good part of Saturday and the boys on Sunday. The weekday sessions are broken up into two sessions. All the students are now equipped with Dodger uniforms, have their own gloves and new shoes, amongst other things.

One of the major changes has been the starting time of the first school class at 8AM instead of 7AM. This was a big controversial change, but it appears to have made many people happy, including the students and teachers. The arena was finally officially finished and the students are now instructed in basketball for 2.5 hours per week. We hope to put together a competitive girls team of age 15 and under and a boys team of the same age. Those teams will begin to play in a competitive league starting in early June. We will find out how good we can coach shortly.

Our soccer coach has been contacted about what we might be able to do in regard to making an excellent soccer field for the Ugandan National age 17 and under team to practice and play on. As you may know, our next project will be the construction of the 400 meter track. The Football Federation wants us to put in a first class grass field inside the track. We have to obtain the detailed plans for the track and figure out where we are going to put it. We were hoping to obtain the plans that were used by Hillsdale College in installing their new trackfor this track, but so far they have yet to be sent to us. We had hopes of starting the construction of this track by sometime late summer or early fall with completion early in 2020. We may still get it done by that time.

A very significant event took place this past Saturday, February 23. The team that will represent Uganda in the East Africa tournament, a part of the qualifying round for the 2020 Olympics came to the complex to play a game against the students at the AVRS school. The score was 22-5 in favor of AVRS. The first pitch thrown to an AVRS batter was deposited out of sight for a home run. Why they managed to score 5 runs off us, I do not know. All I can say, in the six years, there is not a team in Uganda that has yet to beat an AVRS team in baseball or softball. It is expected that the National team will probably go on to win the East Africa tournament as they are heavily favored to do so. How far they will go, no one knows, but they are certainly not the best team in Uganda in regards to baseball. The best team in Uganda is still located at the AVRS school. The so called National Uganda Softball team still refuses to play the AVRS girls even though they have been invited to play the school team for the past year. Undoubtedly, they do not want to suffer a defeat like the one suffered by the baseball team.
 

May 2019:

 

Things keep moving forward with our program. The Ugandan National Baseball team is trying to qualify for a spot in the 2020 Olympics. The team went to South Africa and is playing for the championship of Africa which the winner will then enter into the Europe Africa tournament where that winner will advance to the Olympics. The team has 7 players from the school on it and two of its coaches.. In late March and early April, it came to the school to play three practice games against the school team and lost all three games. It just goes to show you the young talent that is at the school, and it is getting better with the great help of the people from the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In mid June, the school, which is a member of the RBI program of Major League Baseball, will be sending a girls softball team and a team of boys age 15 and under to play in the RBI Caribbean qualifying tournament at Dodger Town in Vero Beach Florida. These tournaments will start on June 19 and end on June 23. The winner of the tournaments moves on to the World championships in August. Those games will be played in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, the boys will be playing in the Wilson Premier Tournament near Orlando from June 22 through June 26.

Starting May 7, we will be hosting our Uganda Little League Tournament for boys age 12 and under to be followed by the girls age 12 and under. The winner of these tournaments technically should have the right to move on to the European/Africa tournament in Poland. Unfortunately, they probably will not be able to get there. The last African teams to make it to those tournaments were from the AVRS school, in 2015 which won both by going undefeated when we were expected to lose. Ever since, we have been banned from playing there again and probably no African team will get there again due to the problem getting EU visas and the high travel and other costs. Ever since 2004, we have asked Little League to break Africa away from Europe and host an African tournament where the winner would go to the U.S. for the Little League World Series. They claim they are still studying it 15 years later.

At the school, things keep advancing. Beginning this week, the Uganda National Netball team is practicing at the school. They expect to be doing this over the next month. In addition, the Ugandan National Basketball Federation wants to use our arena as their training site for the 17 and under National team in May and early June, and then for their senior team in June. Both programs have recognized that this is the best facility in the country. During my stay in Uganda over the next five weeks, I will be meeting with the head of the Uganda Football Federation about a new facility we will be building starting in late May. This will eventually turn into a 400 meter eight lane track built to International standards whose infield will be a football pitch. The football pitch must be grass according to the Federation so they can use it as the training base for the Uganda National 17 and under football team, and maybe even for the Uganda National team. We will also be building our last currently planned major building which we will start in July and expect to finish by the time the new school year starts in January 2020.

 

This will allow us to set up a computer class room for 50 computers, more offices, and will be known as the Reception Building. During the next two months we will also be working on making field 5 into the best baseball field in Africa, and building another softball field.

 
One very special thing that has happened at the school this year, is the wonderful involvement of the LA Dodger instructors. We have learned that they have dreams that match ours and that is to make the facilities at the school the very best found anywhere, especially for baseball and softball. Bringing all the dormitories up to western standards may be a pleasant surprise for our current and future students. But it is something that should be done as we want to be known for the best of everything, not just for the best athletic facilities.

 

July 2019:

 

The past two months of seen some significant progress and some problems. Starting with what has happened in May and June, the complex held its annual Little League tournament for boys and girls of age 12 and under. Advances have been significant in the programs that are serious about developing baseball and softball in Uganda and it showed in the tournament's championship games. The boys game was between AVRS and Lugazi. They had Lugazi jumping out to a 2-0 lead in the first innings. It went to 2-1 in the third and eventually AVRS won the game with 2 runs in the bottom of the fifth. The game was completed in under 70 minutes. Very few walks and really fine baseball was played.

In the girls championship game, AVRS played against Lira. While AVRS won the game 9-7, the game could have easily been won by Lira if they had made a couple catches on routine fly balls to the outfield. The Lira pitcher had AVRS on its heels the entire game mixing in change ups with fast balls. It was the most effective game pitched by the LIra pitcher seen at the complex. Better fielding support would have given her the victory without a doubt. The young competition is getting better and better in Uganda as coaches are learning how to win in tournament play.

On June 12, the school was paid a visit by the Vice President of Uganda. This was a major event in the school's history and hopefully the school and baseball and softball in Uganda will benefit from the visit in the future. The Vice President was amazed by what he saw as far as the school and the athletic facilities at the school. What everyone is learning about AVRS is that the school is unique in having excellent athletic facilities and academic facilities. Everyone, including the Vice President, is amazed at the arena, noting that it is the only facility like it in all of East Africa.

One of the problems encountered in Uganda is how the government treats the athletic programs. The arena is the only facility in the country that has the proper floor for Net Ball to be played on. Uganda is ranked as the number 7 team in the World in this sport, a big sport in the UK and especially in Australia. The World Championships are being held in mid July in Liverpool, UK and the Uganda National team expects to be able to increase its world ranking. They came to the complex on May 10 with a request to use the arena for the National Teams preparation for the World Championships. We agreed they could use it when the school was not using it, which was every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9AM to 1PM, and all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday starting in Mid May. Their problem was that they would have to travel from Kampala to the complex each day. While money was in the budget for that purpose which was being funded by the Government, the government never released any money to the team to travel back and forth from Kampala, and thus as of early June, they have yet to use the facility. Will this hurt them at the World Championships, only time will tell.

In mid June, AVRS sent three teams to play in Florida. The junior boys, 15 and under and girls softball, 18 and under went to Dodger Town in Vero Beach Florida to play in their respective RBI tournaments. The winners would proceed to the World Series in August. Uganda made it to the championship game in both tournaments. They did not win, even though both teams were in position for victories, but really questionable calls by home plate umpires wound up preventing their victories. The boys lost 5-4 to Puerto Rico and the girls lost 7-6 to the Dominican Republic. During the tournament, Stan Kasten, President of the LA Dodgers, and Mark Walters, principle owner and Chairman of the Board of the LA Dodger came to Dodger Town to see and talk to the boys and girls. They saw a game played by the boys and also a game played by the girls. They were very impressed by what they saw and heard. It was a great day for the future of the students at AVRS and the complex itself.

AVRS also sent the senior boys to play in the Wilson Premier League Tournament with about 60 other teams from the U.S. The purpose of this trip was to expose the boys to college coaches. That was accomplished with a number of coaches interested in getting some of the boys admitted to their schools on full scholarships. Unfortunately, talk is cheap, so we will have to wait for action, which always speaks louder than words.

 

September 2019:

 

The AVRS school has begun its last semester of the school year last week. The next couple of months will see a number of changes taking place at the Uganda Little League Complex. One of the major events has been that the NGO Board of Uganda has finally agreed to renew our NGO for another number of years. As we continue to learn from our experiences over the years, we will now be able to formally apply with the Uganda Revenue Service concerning our current status, and that should eliminate some of the taxes we have been asked to pay in past years. This has to be done formally, which in the past we had failed to do. By having this renewed NGO, we can now continue with getting our Memo of Understanding with the Uganda Commissioner of Sports moving to implementation. This has been held up since June of 2018 due to the fact that our old NGO had expired and we had not been able to get it renewed until August of this year.

We have begun construction of the last major building at the complex in July. This is a reception building which will have two floors. The bottom floor will have offices for the school and the Dodger coaches, in addition to being the official reception center for all our visitors. It will have a wide open room on the top floor that will have potential seating for about 150 to 200 students to watch videos and other presentations. The completion date is expected to be by the start of the 2020 school year, about mid January. This will allow us to convert the current room that we use for videos to be converted to a large computer classroom with about 50 computers.

The Dodger coaches have already worked out a plan for recruiting the incoming S1 class of January 2020. They will be working in October and November on the final selection of incoming students. The change is that the Dodger organization is working on the bases of the schools original intent, and that was to bring students into the school regardless of their family's economic conditions. They are going further, and that is to not only give the students complete scholarships to cover their tuition and room and board, but also to pay for their travel expenses of getting to the school and returning home after each semester in the school. Once the students are selected, they want nothing to get in the way of the students attending the school for the full six year program.

In regard to the baseball program, we have had discussions with the Dodger organization in August. The wish is to build a complete locker room facility and also an enclosed structure to house 6 or 8 batting cages and 8 pitching mounds where the most modern electronic equipment will be set to monitor pitching motions and spin and speed of the pitched ball, in addition to monitoring the swings of the batters. The intent is make this equal to or better than the academy they run in the Dominican Republic. Nothing like this exists any where in the world for students as young as 11 years old who are just coming to secondary school. The discussions also focused on teaching methods we need to change in order to get these students producing top results on the SAT exams that they will be taking over the course of their secondary career at the school. While we would like every incoming students to reach 1600 on the combined Math and English scores, we are currently putting in place a program that we expect will get them to a combined score of at least 1250.

Starting in January, we will continue to work on getting field 5 ready for planting the right kind of grass. We need to get it to the standards that major league baseball has for its fields. Once this is done, we will be able to work on improving the conditions on field 4, and finally on field 3. In November, we hope to have a meeting with the head of the Ugandan Soccer Federation in how they would like the field that they wish we put in which will be surrounded by the eight lane, 400 meter track. We hope to be working on this also starting in January. We need to have the expertise of growing and maintaining the best grass fields in Uganda, not only for baseball and softball, but also for soccer people as they want to base their U17 team on this new field we will be building under their guidance. Our goal is to have the best athletic facilities in all of Uganda. We already have that for all the indoor sports, now we need the best facilities for the outdoor sports. While we currently have the best baseball and softball fields in Uganda, they are far from being good enough. The same goes for soccer. We need to make them equal to the best in the world. The netball people want to hold international tournaments in Uganda, and the only place in Uganda where that can happen now is at the arena at the complex. It is also the best place for basketball, volley ball and other indoor sports and activities.

 

November 2019:

It has been a relatively quiet couple of months. The school is back in session and we are beginning to plan for next year. The LA Dodgers wish to continue our relationship as do we with them. Due to the changes that are contemplated, it is expected that we will have to enter into a more formal agreement, one that is in writing. We are now in the process of putting that together and we hope to have a formal signing taking place at the Winter Meetings in December. It is expected that there is a lot of work that will be done to bring the facility up to the standards of the best Major League Academy anywhere in the world. That means club house and batting cages and pitching mounds along with first class playing fields. Here the goal is to have three full size fields with first class grass that is both fertilized and irrigated.

In working for next year, the Dodger coaches are at the moment recruiting potential students to enter the school to start the new school year this January. We will also be modifying our teaching techniques with this class to greatly increase our student's SAT scores in future years. That means we need to emphasize reading, writing, speech and math for all our students.

One major accomplishment that has occurred this past month has been the acceptance of one of our female students to attend college here in the U.S. She will be on a full scholarship starting in January and is expecting to play on the college softball team and soccer team. She has spent time with both of those coaches and they are looking forward to using Uganda as a potential pipe line for future athletic/academic recruits. The school program will require her to start the college program on January 13. This is the first student of the school to be going to college in the U.S. There will be a lot of people watching what happens in the next year, not only in the classroom, but also on the ball fields.

In the next two weeks, we will be working very hard to coordinate the January tournament schedule for the secondary school program. This will be the fourth year of us running this program. Last year, we hosted the S-1 to S-3 program for the third year and the S4-S-6 boys baseball program for the first year. We also hosted the S1-S6 girls softball program. We will be working with the Ugandan Commission of Sports to extend this program in 2020 and beyond.

 

March 2020:

A number of significant things have happened in the past couple of weeks. I represented Uganda at the Europe/Africa Little League District Administrators meeting which was held in Warsaw, Poland on February 20 and 21. At the meeting, which was attended by most European Countries, but only Uganda and one other African Country, I was told that Little League International had no intention of breaking Africa away from Europe at any time in the near future. In the conversation with the Little League International Representative, it was mentioned that Uganda should host an All Africa tournament with the winner then traveling to Europe to play in the Europe/Africa tournament. I then asked who would pay the $35,000 for that teams travel to Poland for that tournament. I was told they would have to. It is so nice that only an African Little League team is asked to pay that amount of money to play in a tournament that might get them to the World Series. No other Little League team in the world is asked to pay that amount of money to play in the Little League tournaments. Why not just bring the team representing the second most populous continent in the world directly to Williamsport?

In any event, Uganda has decided to host a boys and then a girls All Africa tournament in May of 2021 at the Uganda Little League Complex. Uganda will cover food and housing at no cost to the visiting teams. Uganda will also offer to meet the teams at the Entebbe Airport and bring them to the complex at no charge. Each team will obtain their visa to Uganda, if needed, at the Entebbe airport upon arrival. These facilities do not exist in Europe, except at Kutno, while Netherlands and Italy host little League tournaments where the teams pay for their own housing and food and transport to the fields from their hotels.. Each African tournament winner will have the option to travel either to Poland at the cost of about $35,000 pee team with the problem of finding a Polish Embassy in Africa that will give them a visa to Poland upon them showing that they have paid for the airline tickets, have paid for medical insurance in Poland and have proven to the Polish Embassy that they have several hundred thousand Euros that they might need to cover their costs in Europe. Only them might they get the visa to Poland. Thanks Little League. Why don't they just send the team directly to Williamsport, or do they want to keep Africans away from Williamsport?

The AVRS school continues to move ahead with this years schedule. Our annual Uganda Little League tournament will be held starting on May 6 for the boys and May 11 for the girls. The boys will be expected to arrive at the complex on May 5 and be leaving on the afternoon of May 10. On that afternoon, the girls will be expected to arrive to begin play on May 11 with their championship game held the morning of May 15. Both tournaments are expected to have eight teams playing in a double elimination tournament with a single championship game. In 2021, both these tournament will be followed by their respective All African tournaments.

The Dodgers are continuing to make progress. At the moment, there are now four coaches staying at the complex training the students athletically and academically in trying to vastly improve their SAT results. This is important as both we and Dodgers expect the students to obtain scholarships to American Colleges and Universities to play sports, but to also have good academics. So far, our first student is here in the U.S to play softball and soccer. Unfortunately, her softball season ended as the games were just about to begin. In regard to softball, as the Dodgers used to say when they were in Brooklyn," Wait Until Next Year". In the meantime, the soccer coach is eager to have her play with the soccer team starting in August. She is disappointed at the moment, but is eager to start play on the soccer fields. meanwhile, she doing well academically while majoring in Computer Science.

 

July 2020:

Uganda Little League baseball and softball has been shut down ever since mid March and at this time, mid July, we have no idea as to when play will be able to resume. Travel into and out of Uganda is still not allowed. The one thing we do know is that a number of players are randomly throwing baseballs and softballs around. The AVRS school, has been shut down and when will classes resume is still unknown. Hopefully for the student's sake and the Dodgers' hope, it will be early in September or sooner.

 

February/March 2021:

Uganda Little League Baseball is in a period of uncertainty at this time. The Ugandan Government has allowed students in S4 and S6 to return to school for 6 weeks last October and for about two months starting January 19. This is in preparation for them to take the National Exams which will be given in March for the S4 students and April for the S6 students. At the start of February, they allowed the S3 and S5 students to attend. As of this writing, the end of February, we still have no date for the return of the S1 and S2 students. There is some thought that they might return early in March and have the 2020 school year finish in June and begin the 2021 school year sometime in late August. All this is currently uncertain. How and when they finish the school year of 2021 is also unknown. There is some talk that it will extend into 2022, which means the school year of 2023 will still not return to a normal schedule.

What is sure though, is that we are continuing to build the program as best we can. Starting on March one, our next major project will begin construction. This is the building of an International level running track with electronic timing. From our information, there are only two surfaces allowed on an International level track, and this one will have one of those. The electric timing will allow us to send video of the performance of our students ability in running to U.S. college track coaches and help them obtain potential track and field scholarships. We are told that there is no other track like the one we are going to build in all of East Africa. We will be moving a lot of dirt over the next three months in preparing the site for the track surface and for building the baseball field, Field 5. This baseball field is expected to be the premier baseball field in all of Africa. We expect to plant the grass starting by the end of May and have the ability to water it on a regular basis and also use wed killer and fertilizer to bring it up to Professional level standards. This field will be used for games only and will have warning tracks, dugouts and all the things that are required for a first class playing surface. We continue to build athletic facilities of the highest quality in east Africa, and we will continue to do this.

Since the school schedule is so much up in the air at this time, it is very hard to plan for our normal May and January tournaments. If we do have a two week break in the school schedule sometime in May or June,, we will run our Little League tournament for boys age 12 and under and girls 12 and under. Hopefully, that will be done in early to mid May and no later than early June. In order to make that happen, all our participating Little Leagues have been asked to submit their at least 12 game schedule for all the teams and the rosters of all their teams by March 1. We want to be prepared.

In regard to our January Secondary School program that we run with the aid of the Office of the Ugandan Sports Commissioner, we would hope that we will be able to run it in late December or early January. This would consist of two tournaments for boys, one for S1-S3 and the second for S4-S6. We would also want to run the girls S1-S6 tournament during this time. To do this, we would need at least 18 days of no classes. The only thing we have now is uncertainty about all these tournaments.

 

July 2021:

The Uganda Little League has once again suffered the problems of the virus. The Uganda School year has been totally disrupted, and that includes the school year at AVRS Secondary School, the school at the complex where all students can attend the school and live at the school so long as the government of Uganda allows the school to operate. In 2020, the students in S4 and S6 were allowed to return to the school for in class instruction with a two week break for Christmas. This was so they could be prepared to take the end of year National Exams in March and April that they were supposed to originally take in October and November.

 

In January, they began to allow the S3 and S5 kids to return to the school. In March, the S1, and S2 kids were allowed to return. In March and April, we lost the S4s and the S6s as they finished their national exams. On May 25, they sent the S3 and S5s home for two weeks, only upon their return on June 7, they closed all the schools again and as of today, June 18, the country is in total lock down for the next 42 days. How do you run a school and allow students to play sports and no one seems to know what is going on in the country with the virus.

 

To the best of my knowledge, the S1, S2 and S3, and S5 students were supposed to be at the school until the end of July, with the next school year expected to resume around August 15th, instead of the normal late January of 2021. Now the school year will extend an additional six weeks beyond the end of August to make up for the current expected shut down that is currently taking place and the new year will resume late in September. But as of today, it may be extended later as the president has just announced a more severe lock down of the country for the next 42 days or so. No one knows when or how the schools will return and when the students will be allowed to play sports again.

In summary, for the second year in a row, no Little League tournament has been held in Uganda. We have also been forced to cancel the Secondary tournament scheduled to be played in January of this year. We do not know if we will be able to play it sometime in the year 2022. The LA Dodgers have been trying their best to train our students to develop into the best players they can become. It will be interesting as to how their work will be done the rest of this year. The Dodgers had five people here to train the kids up until this week. Currently, they expect to be at the complex the rest of this year and into next, but they will also be allowed to be rotated home to the U.S. for as much as 3 or 4 weeks. The sad part is that travel internationally is not the easiest thing to do in this continuing year of the virus, especially in Africa currently. We will try and keep everyone informed as things develop in the future.

 

September 2021:

Unfortunately, a six week closure of the country at the end of May to control the virus has turned into a six month closure at the rate it is going. All schools were closed at the end of May and at this time, no knows when they will be allowed to open. At the time, the best guess may be January 2022.

In any event, things in some form continue to go on. The Dodger coaches have allowed about 20 boys to remain at the complex and continue to work on their athletic sills and also to operate as an academy, which is really just following what the soccer people do across Africa.

During the past two weeks, we had over 90 baseball players of all ages come to the complex to play baseball. They represented various locations around the country and drafted the 20 or so players that were staying at the school. We did not want those players to play as a team in order to keep the games competitive. After 14 days of playing games among six teams, a champion was crowned on Thursday and everyone went home on Friday morning. Starting on October 1, we we be hosting a softball tournament for the women and girls around the country at the complex. Once again, this is working with the people of the Ugandan Baseball and Softball Federation.

One of the good things coming out of these tournaments is the publicity the program is getting. The baseball tournament had a piece on the local television news programs and an extensive article in the New Vision News Paper. It also brought out the Head of the Ugandan Olympic Committee to the complex and his statement that he is looking to have a Ugandan Baseball and Softball team in the 2028 Olympics. Those sports will not be part of the 2024 Olympics in France, but will be part of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angles.

For the students of Uganda, 2021 has been a totally lost year. The schools were shut down in mid March 2020 and an attempt was to try and get the 2020 school year completed in late 2020 and run it until July 2021. The school year of 2021 never started and that is unfortunate for all the children of Uganda. Hopefully, 2022 will be much better and the AVRS school can get back to normal operation. I know the Dodgers cannot wait for that to happen.

In regard to the tournaments of 2020. We do not know at this time if we will be able to play the Secondary School tournaments that we normally play in January. We need to find out if the secondary schools are currently playing. We normally play in May the tournaments for the Uganda Little League Championships. We do believe that those leagues will be playing. Our concern is that we do not know what our school schedule will be for the coming year and if the school will not be in session in early May when we would normally host those tournaments. We would need of at least two weeks of the school not being in session for us to house and feed the boys and the girls playing in those tournaments. If we can schedule it, we will host the 2022 Little League Tournaments in May 2022.

 

November 2021:

As the year 2021 comes to a close, the AVRS Secondary School remains closed as a school, but the LA Dodgers have continued to keep about 20 boys at the school constantly working with them to improve on their athletic talents.

 

During the month of October, we hosted a two week tournament for the baseball players of Uganda regardless of age, working with the Ugandan Baseball and Softball Federation. Following that two week program, Ms Allen Vivian Balondemu hosted a full week softball program at the school, also regardless of age, also working with the Federation. During those programs, we were visited by a number of government employees concerned with sports in schools.

 

The new Ugandan Sports Commissioner spent a couple days at the school and was very impressed by what we were doing. He has vowed to work with us on expanding baseball and softball into more secondary schools and is very interested, as are several others, on producing a National team for baseball and softball to compete in International events, the World Baseball Classic and the Olympics. We expect that many of our trained baseball players will be playing on the teams and coaching the teams. The only current name that is being asked to coach the softball team is our Managing Director, Ms. Allen Vivian Balondemu. This based upon her experience in bringing teams to the Little League World Series and to the championships in the two Florida RBI tournaments that the school team played in prior to the shutdown due to the virus. Without a doubt, she is the most successful softball coach in Uganda.

We believe that the Ugandan Secondary Schools will be opening in early January, 2022 in order to finish up the 2020 school year. Following the 6 or 8 weeks, the 2021 school year will begin. This will mark the 10th year that the AVRS School will be educating students. It will also mark the 10th year since the school was started up under the direction of our Managing Director. Without her efforts, nothing would have happened and it would not have developed as it exists today. She was responsible for building all the structures, getting the faculty, the cooks and all the maintenance people that have made the school what it is today. In addition to being the head softball coach of the school team and training a number of other softball coaches, she has also enabled the boys baseball team to also get to the Little League World Series.

 

We congratulate Ms. Allen Vivian Balondemu on her past accomplishments at the school, and hope she will continue doing what she does so well for many more years.

 

March 2022:

 

In mid January, students were allowed to return to school to complete the 2020 school year. At the end of March, the next school year will start. The problem is that all students in Uganda lost a year of schooling while they all aged one year. The real serious problem for at the AVRS school is that we can no longer host a boys Little League team as most of our students entering the school will now be a year older than before. It may take us five years before we once again begin to get 12 year boys entering the school that would allow us to host a little league team at the school. Due to the difference in how little league calculates age for boys and girls, we may be able to field a school little league softball team before we can field a boys team. The cut off for girls is how old they were on December 31 the year before verses the boys August 31 cut off. In any event, the school is back educating students again.

Changes that have occurred while we have been away are significant. In January of this year, the Los Angeles Dodgers officially signed two of our students to professional baseball contracts and those two players are now in the Dominican Republic where all International signees have to be for anywhere from three to six months before they have any chance of getting to the U.S. This is a major first and was given due recognition by the Ugandan Ministry of Sports and the Ugandan National Council of Sports. What is even of greater interest in my mind is that the Dodgers also signed a school graduate of two years ago to be a full time, paid, LA Dodger baseball coach. The Dodgers spent two years in Uganda training him to be a coach and now they have made it official. That is special.

In regard to other events regarding our students: A young female continues her quest to become a college graduate of an American University here in New York City and has now started her Junior year. She will be traveling with the college softball team to Florida this week to start their softball season and it now appears that she will be the starting center fielder this year. Gorret also enjoyed playing on the college soccer team last fall and is looking forward to resume playing on that team starting this August. She has finished two full years as a math major.

Starting in Late January, another graduate of the AVRS secondary school, Isaac Odong, started upon his college career at St Thomas Aquinas College in Houston Texas on a full scholarship to play baseball. His season has already started and he is looked upon to be one of their better pitchers. We will keep you informed.

At the AVRS school, we have once again resumed construction projects. We had hoped that the track and soccer pitch with the 2000 seat stand would, by this summer, be completed along with work on baseball field five. So far, we have not been successful. As of January, while the ground had been bulldozed and relatively leveled as of last June, and we wanted it to settle for six months, work on getting the finishing touches done is yet to be done and no stands currently exist. Work on field five is being held off as plans may change over the next 6 months or so. All attention is now on the track and soccer field.

The age problem we have spoken about above has caused some serious thinking to take place as to what is the future of the complex. The original plan was to have a primary school and a secondary school. Back in 2013, we decided to do away with the primary school. But now, the Dodgers are beginning to think that bringing younger kids to the complex may be desirable. The question now being debated is how to do it. We will keep you informed.

 

May 2022:

The next school year started today at the AVRS Secondary School. This should be the 2021 school year that was totally missed over the cause of the pandemic. All the students are to report back today. The school has been notified that it is back to being an International School. That fact gives us certain ability to do certain things regarding subjects and schedule. While we are still the school of Math and Science, which will never change, we can become more like and American School. Those changes may happen over the next couple of years.

Our two students studying in the U.S. are still having success. The male student is in the Houston, Texas area and is finishing up his first semester. He is doing well academically and is getting acclimated to pitching at the college level. Our female student is now half way through her junior year as a math major and continues playing soccer and softball.
We hope to get back to normal baseball wise in Uganda now that the school year will once again be approaching normal operation at the end of 2022. We will not be able to host our annual Little League tournament this year as the school schedule prevents that. The earliest tournament that we may be able to operate would be the secondary school program in January. and even that may be moved into late December. These items will be worked out in July of this year.

Construction of the track at the school has been stop for some reason. We need to find out the reason why the work has not continued. As of today, money is not the problem as we have paid almost the entire amount for the work that was supposed to be completed by now. Our other project is to redesign our eating area. Our plans for that are on schedule as the final plans were to be agreed upon during the month of July with construction starting in December to be completed by the start of the 2023 school year. We expect to be changing from firewood and charcoal to gas with the change.

 

December 2022:

 

The 2020 and 2021 calendar years have been lost years in Ugandan education. It will probably take over 5 or more years to fully recover, but we are trying, after the schools were basically shut down for those two years. We did finish an adjustment year with vastly different school days scheduled. The year 2021 was supposed to be finished at the end of November 2021, but the new modified school schedule ended it in March of this year. Thus, the 2022 school year, which would normally start in mid to later January started in April. Each of the three semesters was shortened by one or two weeks, and weeks were taken from the normal vacation period. What we know now is that the expected 2023 school year will not start until the first week of February. In any event, we will adopt.

 

As this is written, the AVRS school is in the process of changing the eating area while the school is shut down during December and January. We are converting from using charcoal and firewood to cook, to using gas. Changing from what everyone is used to is very difficult. The old is comfortable, while the new brings unknown problems. To Americans, it may seem simple, but it is a struggle to convince the cooks that his is faster and better. We will find out in February.

The progress some of our graduates are making is significant. Gorret is now about to enter her senior year as a math major with her graduation scheduled for January of 2024. Isaac will be going into his sophomore year, and our latest is Nicholas following Isaac to Houston to begin his senior year. Progress is being made. Meanwhile our two players signed by the Dodgers to baseball contracts in January appear to have progressed past the Dominican Republic and are expected to be attending minor league spring camp in Arizona come February. From there, they are expected to be playing in the Arizona League during this coming summer.

303 Development continues to do amazing things. This next project is the construction and start up of a Breast Cancer Medical Center with an opening date tentatively scheduled for mid June 2023. We are in the process of starting the project up. We have the money and the property to build on. We need to staff the facility and we need to bring the equipment to Uganda and make sure it works. This will be a major break through in the use of ultra sound to help diagnose and to lead to the treatment and cure of breast cancer. The use of ultra sound in this way is only the beginning of the development procedure that will have an impact upon doing bone scans without X Rays that we hope will lead to the process of determining age of students regardless of what a false birth certificate might say. The breast cancer diagnosis and treatment have FDA approval and is being used now. The use of ultra sound for bone scans is being developed and is expected to have FDA approval sometime in the spring of 2023.  We will keep you informed of our progress.