U. athletes will hold Youth Day

Over 1,000 area kids will participate in the September 20 event, which is sponsored by the Athletic Department. Penn's September 20 football game against Dartmouth will be more than just a day at the ballpark for over 1,000 Philadelphia school children, who will spend the rest of the day brushing up on their sports skills with various student-athletes as part of a new Athletic Department program aimed at increasing the University's interaction with the community. During Youth Day -- a new full-day event sponsored by the department -- approximately 250 of the children will attend sports clinics led by the coaches of the men's and women's basketball and crew teams, as well as the women's softball team, to expose the children to new sports. Members of each team will help conduct the clinics. And following the game, Youth Day participants will "Meet the Quakers" on Franklin Field, where they will take pictures with the team and receive free T-shirts and refreshments. The program -- along with the pre-existing Student Athletic Mentoring (SAM) project which pairs University athletes with Philadelphia children -- is part of the department's efforts to increase its involvement with the community. "[The increased community involvement has] been an idea for a long time and is finally becoming a reality," explained Marketing and Special Events Coordinator Katrina Dowidchuk, who created Youth Day. As part of the SAM program -- created two years ago by student-athletes Ed Kimlin and Dan Goldberg -- Penn athletes mentor students from a Philadelphia elementary school over a series of three meetings and one phone call per month. Twenty Penn athletes are currently signed up for the program, which will include students from the Finletter Elementary School in North Philadelphia. Youth Day will be the first opportunity for the Finletter students to meet their mentors. However, due to problems with transportation, as well as difficulty co-ordinating activities with the Philadelphian children, the project was not as successful as hoped. Last year the program worked with inner-city children, but Kimlin said communication problems with parents and the school became a source of confusion and frustration in attempting to organize activities, and the project was not as successful as Kimlin and Goldberg had hoped. "I think we tried too much at once," said Kimlin, adding that transportation difficulties also contributed to the program's problems. "But we're optimistic for this year." He added that the Finletter children "need role models just as much [as the inner-city students] and hopefully we can be more effective in the mentoring with them." Kimlin added that the program is still looking for more volunteers -- particularly more young student-athletes. "We want SAM to continue, so we want some more freshmen and sophomores to get more involved," he said And Dowidchuk stressed the importance of providing opportunities for "[University] students to be involved and encourage the athletic, as well as the academic side of college for the [Philadelphia] kids." "Hopefully the athletes will show the kids that there's more out there than just sports -- school's important too," Dowidchuk added, noting that she hopes to continue the Youth Day programs into the future, perhaps in conjunction with fencing and gymnastics in the winter.

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