Two athletic departments that spend most of the year competing against each other are joining forces this fall on a different kind of program: free basketball and rowing clinics for children in Lowertown and Cedar Hollow who might otherwise have no access to organized youth sports coaching.
The clinics, which will run on alternating Saturdays at community centers in the two neighborhoods, will be led by current Kincaid Ospreys and Bellwater State Miners athletes and coaching staff, with no cost to participating families. Bellwater State Athletic Director Frank Alcott said the idea emerged from conversations he and Kincaid Athletic Director Colin Yates had over the past year about a shared concern: fewer low-income children in the city playing organized sports at all. “We compete against each other on the court and in the pool,” Alcott said. “This is something we agreed was more important than that competition.”
Addressing a widening access gap
Yates said both departments had separately noticed a shift in youth sports participation over the past decade, as private camps, travel teams, and individual skills coaching have become more expensive and more central to how young athletes develop. “If your family can pay for a private trainer starting at age nine, you have a real advantage by the time you reach high school,” Yates said. “If your family can’t, you’re often just left out of that pipeline entirely, no matter how much talent you have.”
The program will offer basketball clinics at a Lowertown community center and a combined basketball and introductory rowing program at a Cedar Hollow recreation site, with plans to add other sports if the initial season draws strong participation. Alcott said both universities are covering the cost of equipment and transportation for participating children through their athletics department budgets rather than seeking new fundraising for the first year. “We wanted to prove we were serious before we went out asking anyone else for money,” he said.
A lot of these kids have never had a coach who wasn’t a parent volunteer doing their best with no training. Having college athletes who take this seriously, even for one Saturday morning, can change how a kid sees themselves as an athlete.
Latasha Byrd, Director, Lowertown Community Center
Latasha Byrd, who runs the Lowertown Community Center hosting the basketball clinics, said she has fielded requests for organized youth sports programming for years without the staffing or funding to provide it consistently. “We’ve done pickup games and the occasional volunteer-run clinic,” Byrd said. “Having Bellwater State’s actual coaching staff show up with a real curriculum is a different level of program than we’ve ever been able to offer.”
Not everyone convinced it will last
Some youth sports advocates in the city have greeted the announcement with cautious optimism rather than full enthusiasm, citing a history of similar programs that faded once initial attention passed. Denise Okonkwo-Marsh, an organizer with the Lowertown Tenant Alliance who has separately pushed the city on affordable housing, said she has seen well-intentioned outreach programs from institutions outside Lowertown struggle to stick around. “I hope this one is different,” Okonkwo-Marsh said. “But I’ve watched universities and companies announce a Lowertown program with a press conference and then quietly let it lapse after a year. We’ll be watching whether this is still running next fall.”
Alcott said he understands the skepticism and pointed to the two-year commitment both universities have made in writing as evidence the program is not simply a one-time announcement. “We didn’t want to make this a photo opportunity,” he said. “Both departments have committed budget for two years, and we’ll be evaluating from there based on participation, not based on whether the cameras are still interested.”
Miners basketball coach Derek Sabino, whose players will help run the Lowertown clinics, said he has asked his team to treat the Saturday sessions as seriously as any team obligation. “I’ve told our guys this isn’t community service for a form somewhere,” Sabino said. “Some of these kids have never had a college athlete tell them they could play at this level someday. That matters more than people realize.”
Kincaid rowing coach Priya Bhatt, whose program will introduce children to the sport for the first time in the Cedar Hollow sessions, said rowing in particular is often invisible to children who have never lived near a program with access to boats and water. “Most of these kids have probably never rowed and never seen anyone who looks like them row competitively,” Bhatt said. “If even a handful discover they love it, that’s a sport they might never have found otherwise.”
Byrd said the Lowertown center has already received more sign-up interest than the program’s initial capacity allows, prompting the universities to discuss adding a second Saturday session next month. “We thought we might struggle to fill the first session,” she said. “Instead we’ve had to start a waiting list, which is a good problem to have but still a problem we need to solve.”
Both athletic directors said they hope the clinics eventually expand to additional neighborhoods beyond Lowertown and Cedar Hollow if the first year goes well. “This can’t fix every gap in youth sports access in this city by itself,” Yates said. “But it’s a real commitment from two universities that spend most of the year trying to beat each other, and I think that alone says something about how seriously we’re taking it.”