SPORTS PROGRAM HELPS NEEDY KIDS

More than 270 area youth are getting physical this summer as participants in the National Youth Sports Program being held at Southeast Missouri State University.

NYSP is a summer sports academy co-sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletics Association and the Department of Health and Human Services at the university. The national program was developed to give low-income and underprivileged youths a safe and structured recreational environment.

"We have approximately 277 kids enrolled this summer in the program," said Gerald Hayes, NYSP program director. "We average about 204 kids per day, and we have to have that many enrolled just to maintain the 200 per day we're required to have to keep this program healthy for the community and the university."

Hayes said this is NYSP's fourth year. Participants meet for five hours everyday from June 1 to July 3, and the program is free for students ages 10 to 16 who meet physical, financial and other guidelines.

Most participants live in the Cape Girardeau area, but buses bring participants from as far away as Cairo, Ill., and Charleston.

Much of the day for participants is spent enjoying sports activities such as tennis, flag football, swimming, volleyball and basketball. Hayes said each day the academy begins with breakfast and ends with lunch so that each child is receiving nourishing meals to help them keep up their energy levels.

But the program is more than fun and games for the students. Hayes said just getting past the mounds of paperwork takes a lot of determination and perseverance. And besides a variety of sports, he said, students also are required to attend nutrition and drug- and alcohol-prevention classes every day.

"It's hard to get into NYSP, but it's worth it 'cause it's fun," said 12-year old Charidy Terry of Cape Girardeau, who is attending the program for the first year. She said NYSP has kept her from sitting at home watching television and "shoveling down chips." She said she enjoys learning about famous sports figures and how to eat the right foods, even though she hasn't yet learned to enjoy the lowfat milk that's served with each meal.

Terry wore on her signature NYSP shirt one of the incentives awarded to participants who work well with others or who are helpful. She had received a "positive purple" clothes pin, which she said could help her win a trip to St. Louis at the end of the program.

"If you do good things to people you get the positive purple," she said as she fingered her clip. "But if you're bad, you get the low-down green and you have to wear it. You earn clips, and the person with the most gets to go to St. Louis for a trip called `A Day with the Pros.'"

Orrice Stanback, 13, is a Charleston resident and in his second year as an NYSP participant. He wakes up at 5 a.m. every day so that he's ready to catch a bus headed for Cape Girardeau at 7 a.m.

"I just want to be here," he said. "I've got friends here that I ain't seen in a while and I like the sports and things."

Delois Jackson, a Cape Girardeau resident who began volunteering with the program last week, said she has seen better behavior and more self-confidence in many of the participants. She said many of the kids wouldn't participate in public sports activities because they felt embarrassed and inferior to other, more advantaged youths.

Now they're developing self-confidence, she said, and believe they can hold their own regardless of who they're competing against.

"They didn't have any self-esteem; I could tell that the first day because of the way they clung to me," Jackson said. "But now they're trying to spread out and experience new things. This is a good program because we're trying to keep them out of trouble and build their skills."