NYSP provides healthy summer fun for area youngsters

Students in NYSP line up to take their turns at a new Karate move

For 14 years, hundreds of youngsters between the ages of 10 and 16 have been a daily part of life at Pittsburg State University on mornings in June. The students are participants in PSU’s National Youth Sports Program (NYSP). This could be the last year, however, as the program is in danger of ending because of federal budget cuts.

This year, more than 300 youngsters ages 10-16 from eight school districts in Kansas and Missouri enrolled in the free camp at PSU. Average daily attendance is around 215 or 220, according to Sharon Sisk, who runs the program. Children start out each day with a free breakfast and then participate in a wide range of activities that include both academic enrichment and physical activities such as swimming, tennis and softball.

Many of the children enrolled in NYSP come from economically disadvantaged homes, according to Rob Hefley, a member of the faculty in PSU’s Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation and the person who wrote the initial grant for NYSP. Without NYSP, he said, these children would not have healthy options to keep them busy while school is out and their parents are at work.

Especially for those students, Sisk said, NYSP ensures that each day the campers will have “good nutrition, a safe place to be, education and lots of healthy activity while their parents are at work and school is out. It is a place where they always know there is someone here who cares about them.”

The day ends for the campers after they have a hot lunch and they board their buses for the ride home.

Hefley said the camp administrators won’t know the final outcome of the battle for federal funding until after this year’s camp ends on June 30. He concedes that the prospects don’t look good. Sisk, meanwhile, is encouraging friends of the NYSP to share their concerns with their senator.

---Pitt State--