Kids are not the only ones who benefit from Kids In Sports.

Families who participate along with their kids win, too. Families participate by attending parent orientation meetings to learn about the program and how to prepare their kids to participate. Parents attend their kids' practices and games, meeting their friends and other parents, school and parks personnel. Parents also volunteer to help with program registration, to wash uniforms, serve goodies at the snack bar and to be team parents, helping organize and operate programs.

Other parents volunteer to serve as KIS team coaches, receiving training and assistance from KIS, the AAF and other resources.

And finally other parents, joined by school and parks administrators, community business leaders and other interested adults volunteer at each site as KIS sports club advisory board members, making KIS programs happen.

KIS also has tournaments and other special events year round that are great opportunities to get involved for just one day. Most of these events are perfect for groups or families that would like to volunteer together.

To participate in KIS, please contact us at 213/765-1900, or talk to the your local sports club contact listed in the club location pages.

James Dawson, President Ted Watkins Sports Club, Kids in Sports >>

The New York Times

November 28, 2006

Watts Changes, and a Mainstay Bids it Farewell

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

The pint-size White Sox beat the A's 6-0, ending the baseball season the other day at Ted Watkins Park in Watts. James Dawson hauled out the trophies and T-shirts and some final words of direction and discipline.

"Win or lose, be sportsmen," Mr. Dawson told the losing players, 11- and 12-year-olds fidgeting with bitterness under his towering gaze. "Nobody is better than anybody. If he strikes you out, he struck you out."

A folding table appeared at home plate, and before handing out the awards -- everyone got one -- he thanked the players and the coaches and, about himself, offered this: "I have been running this league for five years and I hope to do it for another five years."

This is the same league that one of Mr. Dawson's sons coached in, and it was after a basketball game three years ago that the young man was shot and killed, yet another victim, it seemed, of the neighborhood' persistent violence. So Mr. Dawson's words this month were offered as assurance as much to the club as to himself, for change has come to Watts and to the Dawson's, now formerly of East 105th Street.

Nick Barnes >>

15-YEAR OLD SETS HIGH BAR FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE

Efforts Benefit Kids In Sports Program

Los Angeles - Kids In Sports, one of the city's premiere after school sports programs, has had wonderful benefactors in its 12 year history. Its board includes Olympic luminaries Rafer Johnson, Anita DeFrantz and Ann Meyers Drysdale. Its fund raisers and events have had the benefit of honoring sports celebrities like Olympic Skater Dan Jansen and surviving members of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. From its outset, KIS was unique in creating local KIS sports clubs in each community it serves. Today, hundreds of community volunteers, mostly parents and neighbors in hard pressed neighborhoods, support each of the local 14 KIS sports clubs throughout Los Angeles.

But nowhere in its history has it had a benefactor quite like 15-year-old Nick Barnes, of Pacific Palisades. Nick, a very active Boy Scout, was eager to earn points for his Eagle Scout badge (the highest honor in Scouts).