Having a ball: Flagstaff police volunteer at local Boys and Girls Club

For three days this week, there’s been a Flagstaff Police Department patrol car in front of the Boys and Girls Club on Paseo Del Rio, as police officers volunteered to introduce neighborhood kids to baseball.

“We’re playing baseball with cops!” said Beau “Jr” Lootans, one of the elementary-school-aged kids at the Boys and Girls Club. “We’ve been starting on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Monday we’ve been catching, Wednesday we did hitting, and today we are playing an actual game with the cops.”

Wearing a big red baseball glove and eager to get back to the game, Lootans told the Daily Sun, “[The game’s been] good so far, I got two home runs.” Leaning in conspiratorially, he added, “Hitting is the best part, just to tell ya.”

He said the kids hadn’t succeeded in striking out a police officer yet, but he was pretty confident that, using their newly acquired skills, they’d manage it soon.

Building up the skills of pint-sized athletes is only one of the aims of “Badges for Baseballs.” The six-week long program, sponsored by the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation, is also about relationship building.

“This will continue as a six-week program. It doesn’t have to be baseball. It could be badges for basketball, football, it doesn’t matter as long as our kids are building those relationships,” said Mark Cox, the CEO of the Flagstaff Boys and Girls Club.

While officers certainly taught kids about the rules of the game, they also worked on helping them understand how to work as a team and communicate with their peers on and off the field.

An added benefit, Flagstaff police spokesperson Jerry Rintala said, is that the kids get an opportunity to be around uniformed police officers in a lighthearted setting.

“It’s great, just to get a positive impact at a young age, to let them know we’re here and we’re there to help so they can come to us and talk to us and we’re humans,” Rintala said.

In theory, Friday’s Badges and Baseballs game should have taken place on a field — giving kids like Lootans the chance to really practice their swing.

Challenged by weather and persistent cold temperatures, the program was moved inside and the kids set up a yellow T-ball post and opted for wiffle balls over the traditional nine-inch cork and rubber sphere.

The bright side, Cox said, is the Boys and Girls Club’s newly renovated gym.

“It’s a beautiful time to utilize our new facility,” Cox said. In addition to a new gym, the Boys and Girls Club has developed a new teen center and a “maker’s space lab,” that he’s looking forward to putting to good use as summer approaches.

The facility development, Cox said, was the result of putting the non-profit’s often limited funds to good use.

“A lot of folks think we get support from a national organization and we’re just able to survive. That’s not necessarily the case. We actually have to reach out to individual donors and ask for gifts to keep the facilities open and to help support our children,” Cox said.

Typically, he said the Boys and Girls Club will serve about 300 students with programs like Badges for Baseball. Some years, the kids are given the opportunity to travel to Maryland for a baseball trip, but this year limited funding has scaled things back a little. Closer to 200 teens and youth, he estimates, will be served by this year’s program.

Still, he’s proud of the new facilities, and the way the nonprofit is leveraging the funding they have to support Flagstaff kids.

“Our mission is to inspire and enable young people, especially those that need us most, to reach their full potential as young, caring, responsible citizens for our community. Up here, we’re able to provide a safe space for them to go. We have a lot of amazing resources and facilities,” Cox said.