Photo by Alyx Chandler.
Avondale Elementary students practice outside the school as part of the partnership with the LJCC on Oct. 18. The 2018-19 school year is the first year of this lasting partnership between Birmingham City Schools and the LJCC.
When Birmingham native Kirsten Robinson participated in after-school athletics programs through the Levite Jewish Community Center (LJCC) growing up, she had no idea it would impact her so much that she would one day be back to put her own programs in place.
“It’s a vital age to teach them stuff like self-confidence, team building, inclusion. … I think children should always have opportunities to participate in sports,” she said.
A little less than a year ago, Robinson, now the LJCC athletics director, said the grant was proposed to the Birmingham Jewish Foundation. The Birmingham Jewish foundation funded the program for The Lasting Partnership grant to the LJCC that would give Avondale Elementary students the opportunity to participate in free-of-charge organized group sports as part of an after-school program all year. As a child, she said, sports gave her an opportunity to grow and find things out about herself.
“That opportunity was given to me by the LJCC, and it’s one of those vital tools for young kids to be able to express themselves through sports, whether that be learning things about themselves, learning confidence in themselves, learning that they can actually be better people from it,” Robinson said. “I just think sports in [themselves] can encompass so many things, partly because I lived it.”
Robinson said playing sports at the LJCC was such an important part of her childhood that she eventually began working for the community center in her teens. When she graduated high school, she was offered a scholarship to play soccer at the University of Kentucky, which she ended up taking and graduating with a degree in social work.
“I came back partly because it felt like home, partly because it felt like this is what I wanted to do. Sports is what I wanted to teach, and if I could give back what they gave me, it felt right,” she said.
The 2018-19 school year is the first year of this lasting partnership between Birmingham City Schools and the LJCC, she said. The group sports began with soccer, which they practiced from the beginning of the school year until November, when the program switched to basketball. During the springtime, the kids will go back outside for flag football.
“We can broaden our community to make a vessel between schools that are right down the road from us. I feel like sometimes Birmingham can be so cut off and doesn’t have those vessels,” she said.
Robinson, along with a few other LJCC staff members and volunteers, is the one who works as a coach for the children each Thursday afternoon, from 3:30-5:30 p.m.
The kids are split into two groups, kindergarten through second grade, and third grade through fifth grade. Since August, Robinson said, they have started from “square one,” and have learned practice schedules and skills related to the sport, in addition to doing some scrimmaging toward the end.
“The interaction between us and the coaches has been something that has been really amazing to be a part of. The children really look forward to practice and you can tell they are really invested,” Robinson said.
Some of the parents also come out to watch the practices and videotape their children playing, she added.
To learn more about the athletics offered at the LJCC, go to bhamjcc.org.
