St. Martin De Porres | CYO Basketball 2018-2019 1 ST
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St. Martin de Porres | CYO Basketball 2018-2019 1 ST. MARTIN de PORRES CYO BASKETBALL PROGRAM 2018 – 2019 The St. Martin de Porres CYO basketball program offers boys and girls within our community, parishioners and non-parishioners, an opportunity to enjoy basketball at the instructional, intramural and travel team levels of competition. It gives them a chance to develop their basketball skills, teamwork and sportsmanship, plus they are offered a chance for new friendships. CYO empowers young people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ, to participate in community service and to foster their spiritual growth. CYO also encourages parents to share in their children’s growth and to be a positive influence on our youth. This year’s program had 579 participants over 51 teams: K-1 Instructional League (8 teams) 96 2-3 Instructional League (6 teams) 68 Girls 4-6 Intramurals (5 teams) 62 Girls 7-10 Intramurals (4 teams) 33 Boys 3-4 Intramurals (6 teams) 72 Boys 5-6 Intramurals (6 teams) 69 Boys 7-9 Intramurals (8 teams) 88 Boys 10-12 Intramurals 20 Boys Bantam (4th Grade) 10 Boys Small Fry Travel (5th Grade) 10 Boys Tyro Travel (6th Grade) 10 Boys JV Travel (7th Grade) 11 Boys Varsity Travel (8th Grade) 10 Girls Debs Travel (5th-6th Grade) 10 Girls Varsity Travel (7th-8th Grade) 10 We extend a very special thank you to our program directors for the many hours that they volunteered: Chris Fields Athletic Director Chris Fields Travel Director Chris Hayes Instructional Director Jim Peabody Treasurer Matt Grossman Girls 4-6 & 7-10 Director Chris Fields Equipment Manager Ryan Leone Boys 3-4 Director Chris Fields Yearbook Coordinator Tom Henry Boys 5-6 Director Chris Fields Website Coordinator Chris Fields Boys 7-9 Director Chris Fields Tournament Director Norb Hart High School Director Chris Fields Facebook Coordinator We would like to thank all of the coaches, referees, scorekeepers and other volunteers who make this program so special. We especially thank Matt Grossman for scheduling referees for our intramural leagues, travel games and tournament games. We would also like to thank Monsignor Sullivan, Father Abraham, Father Bancroft, Kathleen Davis and Kathy Leahy for their help and support throughout the year. We also thank our neighboring schools – Vassar Road, Kinry Road, Oak Grove, Hagan, Todd Middle and Arthur S. May – for providing gym time for practices, Todd Middle School for hosting our 6th–8th grade travel games, Gold’s Gym for hosting our boys’ 5th –12th grade and girls’ 7th-10th grade intramural leagues and St. Martin for providing gym time for practices, the instructional league, girl’s 4th-6th grade intramurals, boys’ 3rd–6th grade intramurals and 4th–6th grade travel games. Finally, we would like to thank the parents for exposing their children to this wonderful team sport and their assistance throughout the season. Online registration for the 2019-2020 season will start on August 15 at the latest. We continually seek to improve our program, so please contact me if you have any suggestions. Chris Fields Athletic Director St. Martin de Porres CYO Basketball Program 2 St. Martin de Porres | CYO Basketball 2018-2019 Athletic Director’s Corner It’s hard to believe that another basketball season is over, my 13th year as athletic director and 16th overall. I’m so impressed with how the kids’ basketball skills improved from September to March. While running the instructional hot shot contest, I couldn’t believe how talented our youngest players had become in just a few short months. They weren’t afraid to compete for prizes with a gym full of adults! Kids in our B3-4 and G4-6 intramural programs took huge strides in learning the fundamentals of the game. Players in our older leagues and on travel teams continued to build the foundation to make their high school teams or simply play for the love of the game. This would not have been possible without our coaches sharing their knowledge of the game while building a strong foundation based on the fundamentals. Nor would this have been possible without the love shown by our parents to get their kids to practices, games, contests, clinics and events. Without our league directors, no one would know when, where or what to do. For this, I can’t thank enough our directors, coaches and parents for the sacrifices made so that the kids could learn and enjoy the great game of basketball. Going forward, we will miss two long-time volunteers who have retired: Norb Hart (32 years of service) and Vinny Reilly (14 years). Norb has done almost everything over the last three decades, most recently overseeing our boys’ high school league for the last eight years plus coaching his daughter, Jackie, and his sons, Nick and Dan, while working with other CYO volunteers whom he coached while in his 20’s! Norb will be honored this June with the CYO Volunteer Spirit of Service Award at the 4th Annual Catholic Charities Awards Dinner. Vinny was a long-time coach, B7-9 intramural director and travel director and he very much enjoyed coaching his two sons, Tim and Sean. We continue to pray for Laura’s full recovery, so please keep the Reilly’s in your thoughts and prayers. The Reilly’s will always have love and support from our CYO family. Last year I said that my off-season focus would be to delegate more, secure more gym time, better balance our intramural teams and continually enhance the spiritual aspects of our CYO program. Except for the first item (I still need more help), check on the last three, since we had more than enough gym time to make-up over 40 practices, our intramural teams were more balanced and we focused on bringing parents and kids into a personal relationship with Jesus. I would like to focus on this last topic in the next couple of pages. Per Monsignor Edmund Whalen, Vicar or Clergy, Archdiocese of New York: “Unlike other sports and youth activity programs, the CYO is about seeing the goodness of God in each person, developing God-given skills and talents and setting the stage for a life of faith in action. A parish with a strong CYO is a strong parish.” Below is a quick summary of the strengths of our basketball program: Our program had 450 participants in 2006 and has grown to +/- 600 kids since 2009. We typically have over 50 teams in our instructional, intramural and travel programs. Our CYO program is financially strong. Our annual tournament concluded its 11th year with 80 teams and 141 games and has raised over $175,000 for our parish, the K of C food pantry, Camp Veritas subsidies and other local charities. Including general fund donations, we have donated over $240,000 since the 2006-2007 season. We continue to offer the following each season: pre-season clinics to get the kids back into basketball, NBA Style 3- Point Contest, Hot Shot Contest and support the Knights of Columbus Free Throw Contest. We continue to have annual events with the Brooklyn Nets, New York Knicks and UConn Huskies. Over 3,400 people have attended our annual Nets events since 2008. We continue to have CYO Nights at both Marist College and Vassar College. Please see the listing of all events offered this season at St. Martin CYO to gain a full appreciation for the scope of our program. I hope that you had a very enjoyable season and as we look ahead to next season, we are enthusiastic about the plans to strengthen our G7-10 and B10-12 intramural programs. Enjoy your spring / summer (hopefully playing basketball at a variety of camps or AAU) and look to register online for next season no later than 8/15. God bless, Chris St. Martin de Porres | CYO Basketball 2018-2019 3 Enhancing the ‘C’ in CYO Our CYO program has grown to 600 kids and while we have maintained a very strong basketball program, we recognize the need to evangelize and share Jesus Christ with both the parents and kids on a daily basis so that they come to realize that the true meaning of life is having a personal relationship with Jesus. To assist with this mission, we’ve started or continued the following: 365 days a year all CYO participants receive a Word of God email, which contains a spiritual quote summarizing the day’s readings plus a written commentary and a video reflection on these readings. At a minimum, this gives participants the chance to spend 5 to 10 minutes each day with our Lord to learn more about his Word. As a result, more CYO parents have come to know Jesus better and some non-Catholics were moved to enroll in our RCIA program to become Catholics. After kids graduate from our CYO program, parents are welcome to remain on the distribution list for these Word of God emails so that their faith continues to grow. At the recently completed Discovering Christ program at Our Lady of Lourdes High School in the fall of 2018, our CYO program had 17 participants, continuing a trend of more CYO participants partaking in the ChristLife series which includes Discovering, Following and Sharing Christ, which is strongly supported by the Archdiocese of NY. Our CYO program provides a $200 subsidy for CYO participants to attend Camp Veritas each summer. This year we donated $2,400 for 12 kids to attend this awesome camp. Camp Veritas is a one-week sleep away pilgrimage experience for teens going into 7th through 12th grade.