Nearly 1,000 youths from across the community participate in the East Toledo Family Center’s recreation programs each year.

ETFC recreation director Danielle Ankenbrandt says that averages to about 250 to 300 youth for basketball, 300 to 350 for summer tee-ball, coach’s pitch, baseball, and softball, 150 to 200 for soccer, and about 20 to 25 for the Hook a Kid on Golf program.

“It gives them a place to come and have fun and not only to learn about sports but about other things in their life like being responsible and how to be a leader,” Ankenbrandt said. “All those lifelong skills that they need to learn..

“The only thing we cannot have enough of is, parent involvement and parent support and volunteers from the neighborhood. Even if I had everybody, we’d still love more. That’s how it is going to get any better. We need all the support from the neighborhood,”

Ankenbrandt continued.

Assistant director Roger Dodsworth said ETFC recreation programs started with basketball and soccer about 1980 when the City of Toledo pulled out its programs and then in 1985 ETFC started girls’ softball

The East Toledo Family Center's Hooked on Golf remains a popular program. Pictured, head golf instructor Jay Libertino gives some pointers to Jacob Darr of Millbury. (Photo courtesy of Louise Kachmarik)

“(Girls softball) got to be a very strong program for a period of time, soccer got to be very strong program and basketball grew from fifth and sixth grade to adding junior high,” Dodsworth said.

Although Dodsworth and Ankenbrandt both admit play gets competitive at times, they say one of the purposes of the rec programs is to teach life skills.

“The focus we’ve been working on for the last eight, nine years is to change the way people think about youth sports,” Dodsworth said.

“Youth sports, you always have the situation where Mom or Dad wants to relive their sporting career through the child. Mom and Dad want their child to be the best and win, and of course every Mom and Dad’s child is the best one out there,” he continued.

“We have spoken to parents, we have parent meetings, we have spoken to children, the coaches, and we finally got everybody catching on after almost 10 years. The program is a recreation program, it is about teaching fundamental skills and it’s about age-appropriate development of the children, and it’s about teaching the kids some lifetime skills — things they will take with them for years to come, have fun and make friends.

“The whole thing is to have fun — that’s what we are here for. The parents are catching on now. We’ve been teaching positive reinforcement to them now for 10 years. We’re not here to win and we’re not here to lose. We learn to deal with success and we learn to deal with disappointment.”

The ETFC provides more opportunities for its young athletes than just getting to spend time on the basketball court or on soccer or baseball fields. Classroom skills often go along with the rec programs.

“To be honest, we usually keep up with the kids academically, for the most part,” Ankenbrandt said. “It really gives them something to look forward to over the weekend. If you work hard during the week, then you can come here and play some ball and have a good time.”

The Hook a Kid on Golf program allows youngsters in urban environments a chance to pick up clubs and learn a game they may never have gotten a chance to play. One local girl who picked up the game through the program just earned a college scholarship to golf.

“It’s a neat program. We only do 25 kids a year, but it’s low cost, and we pretty much charge a $50 fee to play,” Dodsworth said. “The kids get a set of golf clubs and they get a week’s worth of learning how to golf with some expert instruction.

“We don’t have the follow through for it, and we don’t have the support to get the kids from the inner city to the golf course. For a while there, we were getting kids who had parents that golfed. Then we opened it up so we could scholarship some inner city kids, and we took on almost 50 one year. We ended up transporting them there and bringing them back, but there isn’t always money for that stuff, and we had to sponsor their whole participation and we had the money to do it at the time.”

New programs and opportunities continue to present themselves. For those who like hip-hop dancing, the opportunity is now there to learn.

“We have expanded this year. We just received grant funding in the form of $2,000 sustainability grant to do a hip-hop dance in the high school and middle school,” Dodsworth said. “Its classes — learn how to do hip-hop. We had about 20 kids to start when we did the junior high. It cost them $20 and they get about 8-10 weeks of instruction and it’s about two hours a week, and they loved it. It’s not my favorite pastime, but the kids like it.

“We even have opportunities for high school kids. If they come to the East Toledo Family Center and they want to play ball, we can offer them opportunities to play in the Toledo Community Recreation League.”