LaMARC Program in Lafayette empowers youth to help prevent juvenile crime
LAFAYETTE, La. — The Louisiana Multi-Agency Resource Center (LaMARC) is hoping to equip local children with the tools, resources and support they need to avoid entering the juvenile justice system. The program wants to intervene before it’s too late. “This is our diversion program, and it’s to curtail some of the crime that is happening […]
LAFAYETTE, La. — The Louisiana Multi-Agency Resource Center (LaMARC) is hoping to equip local children with the tools, resources and support they need to avoid entering the juvenile justice system. The program wants to intervene before it’s too late.
“This is our diversion program, and it’s to curtail some of the crime that is happening in some these area. We see the different things that are happening, but the LaMARC is here in this community to help our kids become better,” Nicolette Gordon, public information director for the Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice, told KATC.
The event featured a crawfish boil to express gratitude to everyone who contributes to the agency’s success and to celebrate the positive impact of the program.
“We’re seeing some really great numbers,” said Gordon.”They’re coming in, finding out that we have great resources, great counselors and great directors to help them strive.”
Among the program’s participants is 12-year-old Kayton Celestine, who shared his journey of improvement.
“It builds up knowledge and courage. Like a year ago, I was like, I don’t want to say bad but good at the same time, but like now I’m fully good. Now, I do good in school,” Celestine said.
For those like Celestine who may find themselves on a similar path in life, he had a message.
“Y’all don’t need to come to this program if you’re being good,” he said. “If y’all do, do your best.”
A community closet is also available at 2100 Jefferson Street, where the LaMarc program operates. The closet is named after 22-year-old Parker Anthony Romero, who died in a car crash last year.
The closet is open to any youth in the area who need food, personal hygiene items, clothes or shoes.
Minister Bowleg makes an appearance during the Basketball Smiles camp
Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture Mario Bowleg interacts with the youngsters yesterday on day two of the Basketball Smiles camp at Kendal Isaacs Gym. Photo: Jonathan Burrows By JONATHAN BURROWS DAY two of the Basketball Smiles camp brought both energy and inspiration as campers were provided with intense skill development sessions, along with an […]
Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture Mario Bowleg interacts with the youngsters yesterday on day two of the Basketball Smiles camp at Kendal Isaacs Gym. Photo: Jonathan Burrows
By JONATHAN BURROWS
DAY two of the Basketball Smiles camp brought both energy and inspiration as campers were provided with intense skill development sessions, along with an appearance by the Minister of Youth, Sports, and Culture Mario Bowleg.
The day kicked off yesterday at the Kendal Isaacs Gymnasium where the female group engaged in high-tempo drills focused on ball movement and defensive footwork.
Coaches emphasised communication and hustle, while players rotated through the indoor and outdoor courts, encountering drills that challenged both fundamentals and fitness.
The mid-day intermission allowed campers from the morning session to take a break as their session came to a close while being provided with light refreshments.
At this time, campers for the second session began to gather at the gym as they prepared themselves for the afternoon session.
The highlight of the day came during the afternoon session with the male group, when Bowleg addressed the campers. Drawing from his experience as a coach before becoming a minister, Bowleg spoke about keeping passion alive, how the game of basketball can change lives, and how important it is for camps like Basketball Smiles to exist for the youth of the Bahamas.
“It does great things for the youth,” said Bowleg about the benefits of having experienced and fundamentally trained coaches lending a helping hand to develop the youth in the Bahamas.
Campers listened intently as he shared personal anecdotes about his time coaching and stressed the importance of discipline to remain focused and stay on course.
“Coaching and development from coaches from the states help enhance the potential of kids in the Bahamas looking to pursue a professional basketball career,” answered Bowleg when explaining how having experienced coaches from the United States can impact young up-and-coming athletes looking to pursue basketball as a profession.
As the day wrapped up for the male session with a scrimmage, the energy remained high, and the message of Mario Bowlegs’ visit echoed through the gym.
With more surprises and competition ahead, day two set the tone of growth both on and off the court.
Severe storms damage Jacksonville sports complex, knock out power to thousands | News
JACKSONVILLE, Ill. (WAND) – A youth sports complex was badly damaged due to strong storms on Wednesday afternoon. Online pictures and videos of the Future Champions Sports Complex on Keely Street shows extensive damage to buildings around the park. Debris was scattered across a number of ball fields and several items tore down protective nets. […]
JACKSONVILLE, Ill. (WAND) – A youth sports complex was badly damaged due to strong storms on Wednesday afternoon.
Online pictures and videos of the Future Champions Sports Complex on Keely Street shows extensive damage to buildings around the park. Debris was scattered across a number of ball fields and several items tore down protective nets.
Storage and maintenance buildings across the street from the complex were also badly damaged.
A tornado warning was issued for the area around 11:45 a.m. as strong storms moved into Illinois from the west and southwest.
The National Weather Service will survey the damage later to determine the cause. It’s possible the damage was created by straight-line winds.
It’s unclear if there are any injuries following the storms in Morgan County. Attempts to reach the Jacksonville/Morgan County Emergency Management office were unsuccessful Wednesday afternoon.
Power outages reached at least 6,200 customers on Wednesday at 1:15 p.m., according to the Ameren Outage Map.
Severe storms in central Illinois spawned numerous tornado warnings. According to poweroutage.us, nearly 14,000 customers were without power in the entire state as of 1:25 p.m. Wednesday.
Storms have been producing small tornadoes, hail, damaging winds, and heavy downpours. The storms are moving quickly to the east and northeast.
The country’s best teen climbers are coming to Beaverton for the USA Climbing youth championships
Every day, either after school or throughout the summer, you can find 16-year-old Kyra Nelson at Portland Rock Gym in Beaverton. She’s doing fingertip pull-ups. She’s climbing boulders. And she’s training, two to five hours daily, for the upcoming USA Climbing Youth National Championships. Hundreds of the country’s best young rock climbers will be in […]
Every day, either after school or throughout the summer, you can find 16-year-old Kyra Nelson at Portland Rock Gym in Beaverton.
She’s doing fingertip pull-ups. She’s climbing boulders. And she’s training, two to five hours daily, for the upcoming USA Climbing Youth National Championships.
Hundreds of the country’s best young rock climbers will be in Beaverton June 26 through July 2 for the national championship, hosted at Portland Rock Gym’s westside location. Top finishers will represent the U.S. at the International Federation of Sport Climbing Youth World Championships in Helsinki, Finland.
Roughly 650 youth athletes, ages 13 to 19, have already registered for the event, including 39 athletes from Oregon.
Among those hopefuls is Nelson, a sophomore at Horizon Christian High School in Tualatin. She took first place in bouldering at the Region 12 Regional Championships and third place in the Divisional Championships.
This is Nelson’s fourth year as a competitive rock climber and her first time competing at nationals.
“I’m a bit nervous because everyone’s going to be really good,” Nelson said. “It’s going to be the top 50 girls in my age, and they’re all going to be the best.”
Competitive sport climbing is broken up into three disciplines: bouldering, in which climbers reach up to 18 feet without ropes; lead climbing, which involves ropes and walls that rise some 60 feet into the air; and speed climbing, in which two climbers race to the top of identical 49-foot walls.
Nelson competes in bouldering. Climbers get four minutes to assess and climb a rock wall the highest they can. There are no ropes, and thick mats protect climbers from falls.
“You definitely want to be flexible, you want really strong fingers, and you want to have strong legs,” Nelson said.
Charlotte Wylde at the USA Climbing Youth Divisional Championships earlier this year.Courtesy of Charlotte Wylde
Charlotte Wylde, 18 and a recent graduate of Portland’s Franklin High School, will be competing in her fifth youth nationals in lead climbing. Last year, she placed third at nationals and earned a spot on the U.S. team that competed at the 2024 world championships in Guiyang, China.
“ It would just feel nice to get into the same place that I was last year, and I think I obviously just want to finish out my youth climbing career on a nice note,” Wylde said.
As a young kid, Wylde loved climbing trees, streetlights, walls – all sorts of things, eventually prompting her poor mom to enroll her in a gym climbing program.
“What I really like is the fight or flight response that you get on the wall, where you can’t really climb down, but it’s really, really hard to go up, and you have to choose to fight a little bit,” Wylde said. “Even though it’s this excruciating and scary moment, it’s also just really beautiful when you choose to fight.”
Portland Rock Gym in Beaverton will host the 2025 USA Climbing Youth National Championships June 26 through July 2.Samantha Swindler/ The Oregonian
This is the first time Portland Rock Gym is hosting the youth national championships, and it’s happening at the gym’s 65,000-square-foot Beaverton location that opened last year.
“It is possibly the second largest of all the climbing gyms in America,” said gym owner Gary Rall. “It is certainly the largest in the Pacific Northwest, that’s for sure.”
Sport climbing has taken off since its start in the late 1980s.
Portland Rock Gym was the country’s second indoor rock-climbing gym when it opened its original location in 1988. (Seattle’s Vertical World was the country’s first when it opened in 1987.)
There are now 667 climbing gyms in the U.S., according to Climbing Business Journal.
“The first decade or so, it was pretty much 100% outdoor rock climbers just coming in the winter when the weather was foul and it got dark really early,” Rall said. “Now, 75% of all indoor climbers stay indoors, and only 25% of them go outside.”
The governing body for the sport, USA Climbing, was founded in 1998. Sport climbing first appeared as a discretionary sport at the 2020 summer Olympics. It will become a mandatory Olympic sport – meaning, part of the core offerings not up to the discretion of the host city – starting in 2028.
Portland Rock Gym now has two locations: one at Northeast 12th Avenue and Burnside in Portland, and the massive Beaverton gym just north of U.S. 26.
The Beaverton space has two yoga studios, a fitness studio, saunas and a rope hall with a 72-foot-long cliff wall climbers call “The Beast.”
“We look at this facility as an athletic club for climbers,” Rall said.
The amenities have drawn more climbers to indoor facilities, Rall said, but Nelson prefers indoor climbing for an even simpler reason.
“I don’t like bugs and spiders,” she said. “So, reaching my hands in the holds? I just don’t know what’s going to be in there.”
The public is invited to watch the USA Climbing youth championships at Portland Rock Gym’s Beaverton location, 10860 S.W. Barnes Road, starting June 26. Spectator day passes are $27 to $33 and can be purchased online via Eventbrite.
U – Urban and regional planning Within the School of Planning, Design and Construction, the Urban and Regional Planning program is setting out to create a sustainably built and natural environment that enriches communities through smart design, sustainable policy and socially responsible leadership. Faculty researchers in the school tackle big issues like land use, housing, […]
Within the School of Planning, Design and Construction, the Urban and Regional Planning program is setting out to create a sustainably built and natural environment that enriches communities through smart design, sustainable policy and socially responsible leadership. Faculty researchers in the school tackle big issues like land use, housing, infrastructure and zoning — things that literally shape the world around us. One area of focus is informal housing, which are often unregulated dwellings that can ease housing shortages in expensive metro areas but that also raise serious health, safety and equity concerns. It’s research that aims to make cities more livable, inclusive and resilient.
V – Violence prevention
At MSU’s School of Social Work in the College of Social Science, researchers are working to understand and prevent violence across all stages of life, with the goal of eliminating it altogether. Their work spans many areas, including shifting community norms to prevent child sexual abuse, strengthening school policies around sexual violence and bias, and evaluating crisis chat tools, which are text-based support services for sexual assault survivors. It’s research that’s turning insight into action and creating safer, more supportive communities.
W – Women’s health
In MSU’s College of Human Medicine, the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology is leading research to improve women’s health and make care more equitable. From studying pregnancy and postpartum care for Medicaid patients to tackling gynecologic diseases, faculty are addressing both medical and social challenges. Centers like the Maternal Health Lab and the MIRACLE Center are driving discoveries that make a real difference in women’s lives in Michigan and beyond.
X – X-ray diffraction
X-ray diffraction allows scientists to examine materials at the atomic level, revealing the structure of crystals and molecules in extraordinary detail. At MSU’s Center for Crystallographic Research, this powerful technique generates knowledge used by chemists, physicists and biologists to solve real-world problems. Whether it’s improving cancer treatments, developing better solar cells, advancing hydrogen storage or enhancing how we grow fruits and plants, MSU researchers are using crystallography to fuel discoveries that make life better.
Y – Youth sports
Launched in 1978 in response to concerns about unhealthy practices in youth sports, MSU’s Institute for the Study of Youth Sports has spent nearly 50 years researching how sports impact children in both positive and negative ways and how to make those experiences better. One of the first institutes of its kind, its work shows that increasing youth sports participation could improve public health and save billions in medical costs. Beyond research, its team of experts has created practical tools for coaches, parents and communities, including new online modules to help prevent abuse in sports.
Z – Zoonotic disease
Zoonotic diseases — illnesses that spread between animals and humans — pose serious risks to both public and animal health. In fact, an estimated 60% of known infectious diseases and up to 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin. In MSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine, researchers are studying these threats to better understand how they spread and are creating innovative therapeutics and preventative measures to manage disease. And in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, researchers focus on how these diseases could impact farms and food systems, emphasizing the importance of strong biosecurity protocols to prevent outbreaks.
Santa Cruz Mountain Renegades won the Gold Division bracket at the All-Stars Tournaments Summer Slam tourney at Alden E. Oliver Sports Park in Hayward on June 1. They finished with an undefeated 6-0 record to capture the championship. (contributed) Santa Cruz Mountain Renegades softball team continued to fire on all cylinders following a championship performance […]
Santa Cruz Mountain Renegades won the Gold Division bracket at the All-Stars Tournaments Summer Slam tourney at Alden E. Oliver Sports Park in Hayward on June 1. They finished with an undefeated 6-0 record to capture the championship. (contributed)
Santa Cruz Mountain Renegades softball team continued to fire on all cylinders following a championship performance at the All-Stars Tournaments Bownet June Jamz tourney this past weekend.
They brought home the Silver Division 12U title by beating Livermore Smoke, 7-0, in the finals at Alden E. Oliver Sports Park in Hayward on June 15.
The Renegades began Sunday morning with a 19-7 win over All-Stars Miskowicz in the opening round, followed by a 9-0 victory against NorCal Fusion in the semifinals.
Prior to Silver Division finals, SCM finished with a 1-2 record in pool play on June 14. They recorded a 6-5 win over the Strikkers, but fell to the San Lorenzo Heat and Redhawks—this year’s Gold Division champion.
SCM won the Gold Division championship with a perfect 6-0 overall record at the All-Stars Tournaments Summer Slam event also in Hayward on May 31-June 1.
The Renegades beat Livermore Smoke, Toro Stars and Los Gatos Magic on the opening day of the tourney. They cruised into the championship game on Day 2 with victories against AASA Tracy and Bay Area Bruins.
In the title match, Renegades ace hurler Sonya Padilla tossed a no-hitter with catcher Taylor Johnson behind the plate in a 4-0 win against the Riptide.
After three scoreless innings, Johnson drove in two runs that gave the Renegades a 2-0 lead. In the top of the fifth, Rori Saladwick then recorded a two-run single that extended the lead at 4-0.
The Renegades won the Silver Bracket Championship at the Sacramento Mother’s Day Tournament on May 11. Padilla dominated in the circle with five strikeouts and six defensive comebackers, while Johnson picked off two runners attempting to steal a base.
Teammate Kylie Kievlan batted 3-for-3 with three runs scored, while Padilla had a pair of hits and scored one run for SCM. Vivienne Wilson contributed two base hits, while Lucy Davison finished with two hits and a pair of stolen bases.
Avery Shillito scored twice and Maddie King added two of the 12 total base hits for the Renegades.
SV’s Skinner named SCCAL’s co-top female athlete
Scotts Valley graduate Claire Skinner and Aptos graduate Izzy Graff will share honors for Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League’s Female Athlete of the Year for the 2024-25 sports season.
Skinner, who will attend Azusa Pacific University in the fall, was the SCCAL’s co-MVP in flag football, an all-league first team selection in basketball and an All-Pacific Coast Athletic League Gabilan Division First Team selection in lacrosse.
Skinner helped lead both the girls’ flag football and basketball teams to SCCAL regular season championships. She was also part of a Scotts Valley girls’ lacrosse team that was the lone Santa Cruz County team to qualify for the Central Coast Section playoffs.
Graff was the other half to share those SCCAL co-MVP honors in flag football with Skinner, and she was a fierce defender in soccer.
Graff earned four medals at the SCCAL’s Track and Field Championships in May, including a gold in the long jump event. She will continue her track and field career at Occidental College.
All-SCCAL beach volleyball
Scotts Valley juniors Aila Papadopolous and Hayden Smith earned All-SCCAL First Team honors in girls’ beach volleyball for the 2025 spring season. Teammates juniors Rylee Giesen and Makayla McDonnell earned all-league second team honors.
