GRAY, Tenn. (WCYB) — On a warm summer night in East Tennessee, the sound of future ballplayers fills the air as the Bristol Little League’s 9-10-year-old All-Star team takes to the field. For these young athletes, baseball is more than just a game; it’s a passion.

“It feels amazing I just love the sport. It’s really fun for me. It’s what I enjoy to do,” said Liam Belcher, a member of the Bristol Little League team.

Despite the summer heat and school being out, kids from across the area gather to spend their evenings playing baseball. Aiden Musser, another player on the team, shared his enthusiasm for the sport, saying, “I chose baseball because I feel like baseball is the funnest sport there is. I think it’s just fun to be out there with the team whenever you win because you get to celebrate with the team.”

Barry Meyers, who manages the Bristol 9-10-year-old All-Star team, began coaching a few years ago when his youngest son joined the team. “I started coaching accidentally a few years back. My youngest son was on the team and the head coach left. And so I started coaching and have been doing it ever since,” said Meyers. “During Covid we didn’t have a whole lot to do as far as typical exercise. So we started playing tennis, some baseball, and the boys just fell in love with baseball. Actually all of us did.”

For Meyers and the team, the All-Star season is an extension of an already long stretch on the diamond, but it remains a rewarding experience. “It’s a lot of fun coaching 8, 9, 10-year-olds,” Meyers said. “You got the normal challenges. They’re 10, so the attention span and their hand-eye coordination is still developing. But to see a kid make a play or watch them succeed. Or to watch them fail and persevere anyway oh gosh. It’s worth all the difficulties, all the sweat, all the aggravation, all the late nights. It’s worth every bit of it.”

Despite concerns about the decline of youth sports in recent years, there is hope in the Tri-Cities that it can still thrive. “Youth sports is one of those things where I believe will always have a very important place all this stuff that can distract a kid. But there is something special about a team. Playing with others, developing teamwork skills. All the things you get with team sports and don’t get anywhere else, is just one of the reasons why baseball is thriving,” said Meyers.

One of the highlights of the Shrine Bowl football game is the presentation of the Scotty Scott Outstanding Citizens Awards at halftime of the big game. This is the 2nd class of players to be selected, and the awards honor the legacy of Sheridan’s Homer Scott, who passed away in 2023. Scott was a passionate supporter of Wyoming High School Athletics and youth sports in general, as well as community service.

Each recipient was selected from nominations from their respective coaches based on exceptional service, volunteerism, and character. Each player received a $500 scholarship and an additional $500 to donate to a local charity.

The five honorees are as follows: Bridger Cozzens from Little Snake River in 1A 6-Man, William Knowlton of Southeast from 9-Man, Ash Doke of Big Horn in 2A, Ryan Cox from Riverton in 3A, and Masen Wekele of Rock Springs in 4A. Here are the individual player comments on what they do to help their community.

Bridger Cozzens-Little Snake River

My parents have always raised me to believe in myself and do good for others around me. They have taught me to be a leader, and that in turn has created opportunities to give back to my community. I will always be forever grateful for the support group I have had growing up in Little Snake River. I feel that the service and volunteer hours put in will never be able to repay what I have been given. I believe that it is an honor to give back to my town. My goal has always been to not just set an expectation of what a leader should be, but to be that expectation. In my various roles as a student in LSRV, I have tried to set an example for the next generation. I have been involved in every club my school offers. I have served as FFA president, NHS vice president, and a student council member. I wanted to be the change I wanted to see in my community. I have volunteered many hours in my community, such as repairing a roof for an elderly couple, serving food to hundreds of people, setting up funerals, or shoveling snow before church. Although I have dedicated myself to give back to my community in big ways I truly believe there is more to being a leader. I believe that the little things we do every day leave the biggest impact. My father says “Character is not what you do when someone is watching, Character is what you do when no one is watching”. I have tried to become a person that embodies this idea. It means a quick visit to someone, inviting others, opening a door, or even a smile. I don’t believe in bragging about myself or convincing others that I am a good person. I do this because it truly brings me joy. I believe that charity is the pure love of Christ and will always lead to a positive impact. Sometimes it can be hard and it will get difficult, but looking back I would not trade it for anything. It has made me into the person I am today.  Donation will go to Little Snake River Football Program

William Knowlton-Southeast

 have benefitted my community through service and volunteerism several ways, but I think the three most notable examples are from my participation in Scouting, National Honor Society (NHS), and FFA. As a scout I have participated in several community service projects, such as setting out wreaths for Memorial Day and ringing the bell for the Salvation Army. I have also participated in multiple other scouts’ Eagle Scout projects, including mapping the Guernsey cemetery and building a new hiking trail at Guernsey State Park. For my own Eagle Scout project, I grew a garden for charity that covered roughly 1.5 acres and produced just under 500 pounds of fresh produce for the local food bank over the course of a summer. As an NHS officer I have helped plan and participate in several other community service activities, including playing board games at the local nursing home, picking potatoes for charity at the local research farm, and volunteering as line judges and other assorted jobs at school sporting events. As an FFA officer I have helped plan and participate in multiple larger scale service projects, including making tie blankets for Court Appointed Special Advocates in Cheyenne and packing Operation Christmas Child gift boxes to be sent to children all over the world. Our FFA chapter has also held several more local community service events, such as cleaning up dead trees around the school and donating the firewood and building goat pens for the local fairgrounds. I feel that through these projects and organizations I have had a significant, positive impact on my school and community. Donation to Scouting American Unit 26

Ash Doke-Big Horn

The most important things to me are family, faith, friends and football. I loved playing football, but it didn’t always love me back. I have a neuropathy that decreases my mobility and balance.  As a result, I never got much playing time. Instead, I walked the sidelines and made sure I was the first to celebrate others’ big moments. I celebrate others because I don’t live in self-pity.  If I don’t have it, I might as well cheer on those that do. I’d come to practice knowing I’d get knocked down, and was willingly the target to make someone else better. I also demonstrated service through leadership. I never missed a day of summer weights; this is solely my accomplishment.  It was important to me to put accountability into action for my team and my coaches. I also have a learning disability.  To me, it’s a strength rather than a weakness.  It has shaped me into the individual I am.  My teacher told me, “I have been a leader and a mentor for so many other students. I stand up for and support minority students. I am a model for advocating in respectful ways and for bringing teams together and encouraging others.” Outside of school I serve in Church as the first assistant in the Priest’s Quorum. I help choose activities and service opportunities for the young men in my Ward. I’m good at this because I can talk to anyone. I go to our assisted living to administer the Sacrament.  When I do, I make sure I take the time to visit, because the people I serve feel lonely. I willingly give them my time.  You can’t always choose what life gives you, but I choose to uplift others, be respectful and have a positive attitude no matter what. Donation to Big Horn HS Football Program

Ryan Cox-Riverton

I have served my community in numerous ways, but each act of volunteerism and servitude I practiced through staying consistent. I have learned consistency through sports. In order to succeed in the sport I play, I have to stay consistent in all things- and especially consistent in the little things. I have to do dribbling drills to build hand-eye coordination. I have to push the sled in order to build endurance. I have to play 21-outs with a punishment to revise errors. I have to work on my footwork to be smooth and quick. I have to lift weights to get stronger. No matter how boring, tiring, repetitive, and pointless a drill or practice can seem, without them I would see little to no progress. The only way to become successful in sports is to become accountable and consistent through work. I have taken this knowledge and applied it to my everyday life. Recently, the city of Riverton has received multiple complaints about overgrown weeds. Instead of complaining about someone else not cleaning them up, I took my lawn mower, trimmer and brothers and cleaned the areas up. My mom posted pictures of me and my brothers working on the weeds and we received a lot of recognition. I have performed other similar acts of servitude in my community such as: reffing and coaching our junior football program, assisting the ill/disabled community members around town move their belongings from one home to another, volunteering for Special Olympic events, providing transportation for teammates, etc. These acts are insignificant in my life, but are significant to others because they show an impact over time. I have not done huge acts of servitude in my community, but I stayed consistent in the little acts and I feel they have the same impact. Donation to Community Entry Services Riverton

Masen Werkele-Rock Springs

 I am part of multiple organizations that provide dedicated service to the community. I am an Eagle Scout and during my time in the Scouts I learned a lot about doing cheerful service. I learned the importance and impact a quality person has on a community. I have put hundreds of hours over the years into cleaning, building, and improving the community. Some examples of this service are cleaning highways, volunteering at the food bank and soup kitchen, helping others with their Eagle Scout projects, and my personal Eagle Scout project.  My Eagle Scout project was building bridges at Western Wyoming Community College for a bike/hiking trail that the whole community could use at their discretion. I am also part of the Health Occupational Career Academy (HOCA). One of my favorite opportunities for service that HOCA offers is Cowboys Against Cancer. This is an event that raises money for families that are in need of a little help while a family member is fighting cancer and also provides funds for our local hospital that is meant to build and support their resources. Another opportunity that HOCA offers is student mentoring.  This is an amazing opportunity to connect with the upcoming generation in which our class will go out to elementary schools and create bonds with some troubled kids.  My last example was over the summer one of our football team moms needed help clearing a walkway of an elderly woman’s sidewalk. The city had been complaining about the overgrowth and was in need of some help. The elderly woman got in contact with our team mom, and with little notice we cleared the sidewalk. She offered us money for the work which we declined proudly. I would gladly take advantage of these opportunities again. Donation to Cowboys Against Cancer.

We have a handful of photos from the Scotty Scott Awards presentation and you can find them in our gallery below.

The first time Jeff Francoeur saw his Sports Illustrated cover was on the afternoon of Aug. 22, 2005, when Atlanta media-relations head Brad Hainje slapped three dozen copies of the magazine on the table where Francoeur was playing cards with Chipper Jones. 

The next time Francoeur saw it was a couple hours later, when he went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts against the Chicago Cubs and returned to the clubhouse to find his teammates had hung the cover in the shower. “THE NATURAL,” the cover read. “Atlanta Rookie Jeff Francoeur Is off to an Impossibly Hot Start. Can Anyone Be This Good?”

“They just wore me out,” he says, still beaming two decades later. “It was one of the greatest honors of my life, especially being 21 years old. … It was kind of like, ‘Man, I’ve made it.’”

He was three years out of Parkview High School in Lilburn, Ga., he didn’t know how to tie a tie and he was setting the major leagues on fire. He hit .370 with 10 home runs in his first 34 games for his hometown team. Every night at Turner Field he’d hear his childhood friends and high-school football opponents ragging him. He couldn’t imagine how life could get better. 

He’d grown up on SI, devouring the magazine every week. (“Except the Swimsuit Issue,” he says. “My mom would take that away from me, but my brother would always sneak it back to me at some point.”) So when writer Michael Farber showed up to write a story about him, complete with cover possibility, Francoeur was giddy. He was also wary of his teammates’ reaction, so he requested that they do the photo shoot first thing in the morning, before any of the other players arrived. 

But once the story made the cover, there was no hiding from the hype. In the story, Farber explains to Francoeur that in Bernard Malamud’s novel The Natural, unlike in the movie version, Roy Hobbs strikes out. “That’s why books suck!” Francoeur bellows.

“No, the reason books—or at least baseball novels—often disappoint is that authors conjure preposterous characters and absurd situations to heighten the drama,” Farber writes. “Say some hack writer invents a handsome, strapping young baseball player (aren’t they all handsome?), nicknames him Frenchy (trite), puts number 7 on his back (a la the Mick, lucky number, cheap symbolism) and summons him from the minors to bolster his talented but sagging hometown team (so 1920s). The kid proceeds to hit about 100 points higher in the majors than he had in Double A (a fanciful conceit), smacking homers and gunning down runners, all the while singing along to the soundtrack in his head (you’ve gotta be kidding!) and lifting the local nine into first place. Not even Hollywood would buy it.

“Yet since July 7, when Francoeur was called up from Double A Mississippi and became the 10th rookie on the Braves’ roster at the time, that bit of fiction has become fact—right down to the singing.”

Indeed, Francoeur slept in his childhood bed the night before he debuted. His mother, Karen, made him pancakes. Eventually the veterans started fining him and catcher Brian McCann, another local kid, $20 for every night they lived at home; they realized they were going to pay more in fines than they would have in rent on an apartment, and they moved in together.

Francoeur was living his dream. Until the league started adjusting to him, and he couldn’t always adjust back. After that first, impossible season, he hit .266. Fans labeled him a disappointment. He had breezed through high school and the minors, and he found himself completely unequipped to manage failure in the majors. And doing it in front of everyone he’d ever known exhausted him. Those high school acquaintances’ jokes began to feel more like taunts. His parents would go out to breakfast and answer questions about what was wrong with him. 

At first he was devastated to be sent from Atlanta to the New York Mets at the 2009 trade deadline—especially when he had to return to Atlanta six days later to play his old club. But as the Mets’ team plane took off after that series, the funniest thing happened: A sense of calm washed over him. He went 3-for-4 in the next game. “I was completely freed up after that,” he says. He still calls those two seasons in New York his favorite of a 12-year career that included that stellar start, the ’10 American League pennant with the Texas Rangers and a ’16 return to Atlanta before he retired.

When he speaks with young players now, he says, he tries to emphasize that in the end, a strong sense of self will carry you farther than a sweet swing or a filthy fastball. “You have to know you’re going to hit this adversity, and how you are going to deal with it,” he says. “And I think for a lot of these people, that’s the difference between them continuing to go up and becoming a superstar or just kind of flattening out.”

In some cases, he says, he has noticed that the hype starts in childhood. At his four kids’ youth sports games, he hears parents expecting the young athletes to do things they are simply not capable of at that age. 

He coaches his seven-year-old daughter Ellie’s softball team, and for much of the season, he batted her seventh. “I’m like, ‘When she starts hitting better, I’ll move her up,’” he says. “That’s life, and that’s the expectation. And I think parents give these kids false expectations, or expect you to do something you can’t do.”

So he tries to tap the brakes on anointing young phenoms as the future, especially as a television analyst for Atlanta and on TBS. 

“That’s the difference: Can you maintain it?” he says. “I think we see so many guys come up and they have flashes, and you think, Oh, my God, these are can’t-miss guys. But I think the key is: Can they make the adjustments? Can they keep up with the game? Can they do all these things they need to do to put themselves in that position? And unfortunately, us—because I’m, I guess, part of the media now—we put these expectations on these guys that, to me, sometimes they can’t reach.” 

Instead he goes out of his way to discuss players such as Aaron Judge and Bryce Harper, who have proven they can star at the highest level. Francoeur knows how hard it is to get there, and he knows how hard it is to stay there. And he does reserve a soft spot for the ones who make a loud entrance. Can anyone be this good? Probably not—but it’s fun to watch them try. 

Dionne Koller visits the Exchange. She’s the author of a new book, “More Than Play: How Law, Policy, And Politics Shape American Youth Sport.”

About the Book
Tens of millions of children in the United States participate in youth sport, a pastime widely believed to be part of a good childhood. Yet most children who enter youth sport are driven to quit by the time they enter adolescence, and many more are sidelined by its high financial burdens.

Until now, there has been little legal scholarly attention paid to youth sport or its reform. Dionne Koller sets the stage for a different approach by illuminating the law and policy assumptions supporting a model that puts children’s bodies to work in an activity that generates significant surplus value. In doing so, she identifies the wide array of beneficiaries who have a stake in a system that is much more than just play—and the political choices that protect these parties’ interests at children’s expense.

About the Author
Dionne Koller is a law professor and Director of the Center-for-Sport and the Law at the University of Baltimore. In 2021 she was appointed to co-chair the Commission on the State of US Olympic and Paralympics. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and received the 2024 award for significant contributions to the field of sports law by the Association of American Law Schools.

SOUTH BEND, IN (WSBT) — The Play Like a Champion conference at the University of Notre Dame not only helps provide those resources, but it also connects coaches from all over.

It’s a focus on providing equal sporting opportunities for all kids while also educating coaches on their role in a child’s life as mentors.

It’s a three-day conference that unites coaches from across the country to advocate for youth sports.

“As coach mentors, we’re coaching sports for kids, making sure it’s fun. And we are mentoring them. So, that what they learn in sports they can use for their lives and we can help them lead good lives and not just be good athletes,” said Clark Power, Play like a champion today founder,”

Organizers say it’s a community of coaches helping one another while bridging resources to reach all kids.

“We have an abundance of resources in South Bend but we don’t know how to share them as as well as we need to in the very near future,” said Clark Power.

But the common goal throughout the conference is that all children have the opportunity to be active and be part of a team.

“The thing about athletics, it’s not just for winning a championship for something. Sports is good and fun and its own right because kids just need to have fun and laugh and move their arms and things like that, And so that’s what we really want to do is make sure kids, irregardless of their ability to pay have the opportunity to play,” said Cauzae McCall, Michiana Academic and Recreation Association member.

Coaches were also educated on the importance of sports play in a child’s life.

“The way children develop as people, especially socially the way they develop as good children as good friends and then as good community members,” said Power.

It also brings awareness to what happens when kids don’t have a space for recreation and a space to play.

“That impacts their learning in school relationships, being bullied online all these things the lack of mentorship they don’t have a really strong support system at home or church or anything like that. And so, trying to bring the awareness of how much of an impact we can make collectively,” said McCall.

With the importance of sports in children’s lives, organizers just want to be able to provide recreational sports for every child in the community.