Welcome everyone to Midday Magazine for this January 2nd, 2024.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here.
We're welcoming into the studio.
Our good friends from the South O'Connie YMCA.
We have community events coordinator, Stephanie.
Lund with us, Stephanie.
Good to see you.
Good to see you as well.
Good to have you with us.
Thanks for being here.
And you brought a new friend.
We have Baxter, aren't with us.
Sports and camp director.
Baxter, one of the more important questions
are going to ask, did I get your name right?
You did.
All right.
All right, hey, mark that down, Pam.
I actually got a last name right.
I never get a last name right.
Baxter, thanks a lot for joining us.
Appreciate you being here and what you're going to bring
into our community and to the Y.
If you don't mind me putting you on the spot for a moment,
I just want to get to know you a little bit.
And let our audience know you a little.
What can you tell us about yourself, Baxter?
Sure.
I've recently taken the position of the sports and camp
director.
My background is in outdoor recreation.
That's what my degree is in.
And it's something that I'm looking forward to.
And I played a lot of sports in my time.
OK, I was going to ask.
Excited to coach the youth and bring something new to the Y.
What got you interested in this field?
I wanted to do this for a living.
I have had a number of jobs that didn't feel as rewarding
as they should.
And I needed to find a place that I could give back
more than I was.
Forgive me.
But when I talk to people in your age range,
and when I talk to people in general nowadays,
especially if they're starting a new path or a different career
or what have you, that's the answer.
I'm hearing that so much more and more nowadays
that people are, and we kind of got a little of this
after the pandemic of the migration
to when I'm from work of people wanting to go from a job
to a career, or from a career to a passion.
It's just, it never gets old to me to hear that.
I can hear it in your voice that you care about.
That's what you like this.
And I think that's a wonderful thing,
especially when it comes to our why
and it comes to working with the youth,
that's going to go a long ways, especially
on those days when you have shorter patients.
It helps a lot.
That's passion.
It helps a lot with it.
But Baxter, thanks a lot for bringing that to our show,
bringing yourself to our area.
Are you from this neck of the woods, are you?
I'm not.
I've been here for about two years.
I'm actually from Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
Right on, right on.
All right.
Are you enjoying the area?
I love it.
Good.
It has a lot to offer.
Very cool.
And thank you.
And looking forward to getting to know you more
and our audience to get to know you more.
Let's dive right in and make you work.
Let's talk to you sports.
Do you sports clinics are kicking off this month?
Sure.
Starting on the 15th, we have
a few different options.
We've got basketball and soccer for our youth.
And we also offer some for our micro or micro sports
for our youngest.
We're excited to have that.
That's our session one.
And registration is open for that.
You can see our website.
We also will be offering basketball and soccer
come winter two, which will be open for registration
hopefully in the next month or so.
OK.
With the youth sports and the youth sports clinic,
these are for basketball, soccer,
and their for various grades.
I see K2 also with basketball grades three through four,
grades five through six.
I mean, I grew up in a sports family.
My dad was a boxer, a hockey player, and all this.
And I love athletics.
I love playing sports.
At this level, it's so much about the kids
and less so much about the sports, right?
It's more about them getting there,
having something to do.
Learning the sports, certainly.
But really more about them in getting that energy out
in a positive way and learning about working with teammates
and a lot of that, correct?
It's about cultivating an environment
where they can have fun.
At the end of the day, if they can gain some high hand
coordination while shooting a basket,
while having fun, meeting new people, making new friends,
that's what it's all about.
I think as adults, we kind of forget a little bit.
As crazy as we get to sports fans about wins and losses
and championships and all these things,
what sports are really about?
And I feel like at this level, especially at the young level,
we're reminded of that.
We get some of that.
Is that how you approach it?
Yeah, at this age, we like to build a foundation.
We want to have good sportsmanship,
not only from the athletes themselves, but from the parents.
And that's something we can educate everybody with.
That way, when they do get to the higher levels,
they already have that foundation.
And it goes a long way.
Yeah, that's great to hear.
For those that may not know, especially a newer parents
or anybody out there, microsports,
what exactly is microsports?
Micro sports is interactive with the parents and the kids.
Again, it is to be able to play the sport,
have the opportunity to go out there
with a little bit of instruction,
but really to be hands on, try something new,
find out if your kid likes it,
and to get the parents involved.
Yeah, that's a fun way for everybody,
the whole family, to be able to do.
When it comes to the actual basketball league
that is coming up on January 23rd,
this is certainly competition, it's fun and that,
but this is really an opportunity for people
to really work on those technical skills, right?
Sure, it's another educational period.
We, that is open as well.
That'll be a bit more competitive
where we do enforce rules, have referees,
as well as coaching throughout the whole season.
So we're looking forward to that.
It is more based on technical skills,
learning more about the game,
and bringing more of the community together,
because we can have teams from all different areas.
Yeah, it's a good note to mention with this.
It's also a real opportunity,
a chance to do these things in a welcoming environment,
a safe environment, if you will,
a chance where everybody's learning,
keep most people around the same page.
Junior high, high school, a lot of that.
You have some of that certainly,
but not as much, I think, in this situation,
it's built for that to get real invite.
There are no bad questions.
This is a chance to really learn how to dribble a ball.
A lot of those things that not everybody knows
coming out the game.
And a lot of the teams will be able to sharpen their skills
with their teammates as opposed to playing
with random individuals and then having to go back
and build that team chemistry.
Yeah, and that word chemistry,
I think is one of those things to get lost in sports often,
but that's such a vital part of sports,
whether you're playing it for fun
or professionally or anything else,
on these at these age to be able to learn some of those things,
it's only gonna benefit them going forward.
Absolutely.
And I think most sports fans
and most people that pay attention to sports
to kind of understand,
it's a very small percentage of people
who are gonna go on to be doing these things
on a professional level.
The again, going back to the essence of sports,
but every one of these kids are gonna go on
to do something in life that they could use some confidence with
or use do something in life
where they're gonna need teamwork or anything.
The lessons we learn in sports are applicable
to everything we do going forward.
So that's another beautiful part of kids
being involved in this family,
being involved in sports.
They learn so many of these techniques and these things
that you don't always have opportunities
to learn in life.
Yeah, and this day and age,
it's even more important with all the screens
that we have to be able to put it down,
go out there and play a game with your friends,
with new people and take your brain out of the internet.
You can play football in person.
You don't have to just play it on mat.
You can do that.
There's other ways to do that.
When do youth sports session two
that that's coming up as well?
That we've got soccer, multi-sport clinics.
I wanna touch on that a little bit with you
if you don't mind back stuff.
Sure.
Well, we're gonna offer volleyball, pickleball,
soccer, flag football, all on winter two.
Those are gonna be new and exciting.
We're excited as far as the Y goes
to be able to offer so many different sports.
We have the facility.
We have the staffing and the ability to do it.
Now we're just gonna implement and provided
we've got a good number of signups in our community.
We'll be able to put all those clinics on in full force.
Yeah, I wanna get to the signups
before we wrap up today too.
That's something we wanna encourage people to do.
But backster, as you're new in the position,
new to the Y, are some of these things
and things you're incorporating
or things that you're looking for
to incorporating with us?
Or just, in general, these were kind of in place already.
These ones were in place,
simply because I'm very new to the Y.
Nothing's foreign as far as what I'm willing
or ready to teach and coach.
I'm excited for the spring
and I'm excited for our summer or fall
where I can really bring a lot of new sports,
a lot of new activities, opportunities for our youth.
Yeah, I imagine.
Especially when it comes to sports in general
because we've seen this in recent years with pickleball
and here's the sport that nobody really knew much about,
wasn't talked about now.
Everybody knows what pickleball is.
It's not just old people, it's young people,
it's every age, knows pickleball.
A lot of people love playing it.
So bringing in different things to this avenue,
we know that there's a calling for it.
There's people that don't wanna do that kind of thing.
And it is never too early
to be kind of thinking of signing up for some of this stuff,
whether at the spring organized classes and organized sports
that we know how busy parenting is,
we know how crazy that can be.
Before you know it, spring is right there.
So getting a heads up on this stuff is never a bad idea.
The multi-sports clinics, what are those specifically?
What is a multi-sport clinic?
What are those?
I'll take that one over, actually,
because that's one that I've implemented before.
So each week is a different sport, which is really fun.
So the kids get a chance to maybe week one,
we're gonna pull out the hockey sticks,
and we're gonna play floor hockey,
and week two we'll do a little bit of capture flag
in the gym, or dodgeball, basketball soccer,
just a variety, so the kids can touch on
pretty much every single sport
throughout the five week session.
So that's one of my favorite clinics is,
because it's not just basketball, all five weeks,
it's, okay, what's happening this week?
It's something different.
If you have ever met a child,
if you have ever met a teenager,
you know how this works.
They love this idea today.
This sounds really cool today.
They want to spend the rest of their lives
on this one topic today.
Tomorrow, what were you talking about?
I don't know what you mean.
I never, never heard of that before.
Does this sound interesting to me at all?
The idea for them to be able to kind of dip their water
into these different things, and test and see what they like.
You just never know what that might spark.
You know, what might come from that.
Let alone, you know, the fun that they might have
with those things.
That's a fun idea, I really like that.
And just one more sports question I had,
the one-day sports clinics.
Is that similar to the micro sports,
or are they very different things?
Well, micro sports are really designed
for the three to five-year-olds.
So that's why the parents are part of it,
so they can help the little ones.
The one-day clinics, those are,
well, some of them are kindergarten,
and then some go through a 12th grade.
So they're a variety.
It's a one-day chance to come and test out
flag football for a day.
Or, you know what, I want to,
my parents are playing pick-able.
I want to learn how to play too.
So I'm going to show up this one day
and learn the basic rules of the sport.
So that's what those one-day clinics are designed for.
It's wonderful how much you guys have worked
and listened to the community
and done so many different of these events.
And we've just touched on sports.
We haven't even gotten into a whole
a bunch of other things with the Y.
But it just shows so much of how we want to do
what the community is looking for.
We're listening to the community,
we want to do things that, hey, here's this.
And not so much saying, this is what we do,
you guys follow along.
It's so much of, well, we want to do these things.
What do you guys think in working with the community?
And it's where a lot of these events are born.
I would, you know, come from and everything.
The idea of just, hey, dip your foot in this
and try this out.
Or this is available because of that.
And certainly want to talk about
being a Y member as well before we wrap up
and how accessible the Y makes that
and the ability that then.
Again, we're speaking with Stephanie and Baxter
from our South of County YMCA.
And Stephanie, I want to get into some of the events,
some of the different things coming up.
Where would you like to start?
What event, there's so much going on over there.
Where do we begin?
We can just tackle two events right now.
We have pretty much every month
I'm trying to design any events
that will create memories for families.
Whether it's the entire family,
or for instance this Friday,
we have our father, son, game nights.
And that's for boys of all ages.
You can even have an adult come in and participate.
But it's on Friday, January 5th, from 6 to 8
at the Y registration is open until tomorrow.
So if you haven't registered yet, make sure you register.
But this is just a chance for dads and their sons
to come and play.
We're going to do some capture the flag
and dodgeball in the gym.
We have some minutes to win it challenges
that we're going to be doing while we're there.
Some treats, you know, you always have to incorporate
some sugar as well.
Boys love their sugar.
But it'll be a fun night for dads and sons.
Anything people should keep in mind
as far as like what you're wearing or any of that kind of stuff.
You're going to be active.
So make sure gym shoes and shorts,
layers that you can take off
if you get pretty warm running around.
But it's supposed to be a lot of fun.
And we're going to take a picture of them too
and they can take a picture home with them.
I know nowadays everyone just takes pictures
with their cell phones and that's where it stays.
So that's a really fun idea, the picture thing.
This whole thing is a really fun idea.
Is this something that came from the community?
Is this something that you guys kind of wanted to do?
Well, this is actually something I've created
and passed wise that I've done.
My, we have two boys and so my husband's always like,
well, there's always these father-daughter dances
that everyone does, but there's never something
for their fathers to do with their sons.
So it's like, let's get an event for the dads
and their boys to play.
It's got a ton of great events to it too.
There's a lot of fun things to do.
The scavenger hunt, we don't have enough scavenger hunt
that's a fun one, that's great.
The minute to win at the idea of that
is there a lot of fun too, you get a lot more in.
And I gotta say too, as a dad and my son
and I've talked to my son about this before too,
we don't have a ton of opportunities
to be ourselves with each other,
especially as men.
We get a lot of a lot of how we have a certain way
we have to be around each other
and some of these things that I think
we're getting a little bit more and more away
from as a society and just a man as a man.
We don't have, there's no specific definition of what,
it takes to be one and some of this.
The idea of getting more and more opportunities
to do these events, do things with your dad
or with your kid.
You can't have enough of those.
And you hit on this right away Stephanie
and it's awesome.
It shows how much, not just at the why
listens to the community,
the people who work at the why
are a part of the community.
And you get that feel, you have that.
You're so right about this, creating memories.
You ask most people what they want for Christmas,
the last couple of months and everything.
What was one of the more answers you heard?
I want to create, I want something to create some memory.
I want something where we were,
it was something we're gonna build on,
something we can remember.
We look back on years from now.
You remember when we played scavenger hunt at the why
or something like that?
This creates those things.
This gives the opportunity to create those things.
Absolutely.
Again, today's the last day to register.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow's the last day.
And how can people register?
They can go onto our website.
It's swcuimc.org and register there.
Or they can just walk into the why and sign up as well.
Yeah.
How about the coming up the father-daughter dance,
the royal ball?
Yeah, this is one of our favorite traditions,
our father-daughter dance.
We put a theme this year, royal ball,
because you know, girls like to dress up as princesses.
So this is for girls, again, of all ages as well.
So it's not just the younger ones.
We have plenty of teenagers that come out to this event
with their dads and even some adult women that come to it.
But the event is Saturday, February 3rd,
from six to eight at the YMCA
and the Boys and Girls Cup of Wisconsin Rapids.
So we're partnering together
and we're gonna do different activities
and throughout the entire facility.
But it'll be a lot of fun.
We're gonna dance and do art projects
and eat some food and have some contests.
So it'll be a good night as well.
Yeah, this kind of event has grown over the years
and becomes such a, something that I know a lot of people
in the community look forward to.
And another opportunity, again,
to create those memories,
have a chance to be able to do that.
It's also the Keepsake photo.
I've heard from people over the years,
they really love that part of this too.
Absolutely.
So yeah, I love, we bought another printer
so we can print out these pictures for them.
Nice.
And anything that combines our nonprofits working together.
We always love being able to see this.
Of course, the Boys and Girls Club,
you know, right there in the building and everything.
I know you guys do a lot together,
but it never gets old to me to see this.
To see these interactions that are working together.
It makes our community that much stronger.
And it also shows the different organizations,
people from those organizations
and how we can work together.
Stephanie, I'm curious to about future events
or different things with the why.
Are you guys always looking,
are you guys looking for other ideas
or are you looking for the communities interaction
or just thoughts from them?
Absolutely.
I know I always have my ideas because I have a family
and what am I kids like to do?
But I would always love to have feedback
from other people in the community.
Hey, what about this event or have you thought about
doing this at the event that you always do?
So yeah, we'll love feedback.
And I don't like putting anybody on the spot or anything.
So I'm not looking necessarily for details or anything.
But, you know, we're in a new year.
I know how much, how great creative you guys are at the why.
Looking to do some new things in 2024,
looking to do some stuff different in the community
or more interacting with the community.
Yeah, like I said, I'm trying to do about one event
a month and we have a mom's son game night we're gonna do.
We're gonna out at camp in May.
We're gonna do a family scavenger hunt,
which will be great to get people out there
and family is working together
to solve different problems and have fun out there.
So looking forward to that.
And that also means spring.
That also means the weather when that's coming around.
So that's really good.
Thank you for that, Stephanie.
Appreciate it.
And if you don't mind Baxter,
I would like to talk a little bit about camp coming up
and just tease that for people a little bit
and get them excited for camp coming up it.
It was right around the corner, it feels like.
Absolutely.
We have put a lot of money into renovating
and making camp more accessible for everyone.
We have 33 acres of gorgeous lakefront property,
fishing, boating, everything from making s'mores
to throwing axes.
We've got it all.
And it's gonna be a fantastic summer.
New stuff coming right around the corner
and signups will be coming shortly.
Yeah, registration.
Yeah, I want to make sure that people keep an eye out
for that great way to do so is certainly the website
SWCYMCA.org, SWCYMCA.org.
Be sure to follow the Y and social media as well Facebook
and that it's a great way to,
you know, you guys will probably have an update on there
when people are ready, able to register and sign up for us.
That's great, thanks for that Baxter, appreciate it.
I wanted to make sure also to touch on memberships
with the Y.
People listening out there, maybe they've been on the fence
or maybe they just don't know much about our Y.
One encourage, no matter who is listening,
you can be a Y member.
I don't know your situation.
I may know who you are, but I know that you can be a Y member.
And Stephanie, I'm able to talk that boastfully for you guys
because you really are like that.
You want everybody to be a part of the Y.
You will work with people in their income.
Absolutely, yeah.
If there's somebody that may be struggling financially
this year, it's called membership for all.
So you would just come into the Y.
Set up an appointment.
You can meet with one of our members, service staff,
and they will kind of go through the finances
and see, you know what, this is where you're at.
We're gonna give this discount to you
so that you guys can still have an opportunity
to bring yourself or your family
as well to be a part of the Y.
Really thankful to the organizations out there
that make that possible too.
And a big thank you to them.
Thank you to this community and to the Y in general
for doing that.
It's, I've talked about this before
when I got the first tour of the facility
before it opened and everything.
And I'm walking around in there and I'm from Chicago
and I'm bopping around in there.
And I'm like this is a building
that literally could be in downtown Chicago.
Like that's how nice, that's how up to date this is.
It's a beautiful facility.
And we just want people to attend.
We just want people to be able to use it to help celebrate
and not only our Y but our community encourage people.
If you are not a current Y member, reach out
and find out how you can be.
And Stephanie, if people want to do that
or if they want to volunteer,
we know that the Y is run by community members
and it's also benefited by a lot of volunteers
and a lot of people that take out of their day to help out.
We can always use more, can always use extra hands.
If people want to find out more about that
about volunteering, how can they do that?
Yeah, they can either stop in at the Y at the front desk.
They can talk to anybody up there
and see if there are any specific needs.
Otherwise, the email address would be info at SWCYMCA.org.
They can send, just say, I'm looking to volunteer
and then somebody will get connected with them.
But we're always welcoming community participants to come
and help it be a part of the bigger picture
in our community for sure.
And if people have followed questions,
I want to know more about some of the other things
or they want to register for anything we've talked about,
where should we send them then?
So yeah, most of it, you can go to our website
at SWCYMCA.org and then if there's a specific director
that you want to send a message to,
just go on there, you can find their email address
or just call and then they can get transferred
to any of us and they can ask specific questions.
And there are, just, I could not even begin to tell you
how I was gonna try to get throwing number out there.
I can't even like pull one out of the top of my head.
There are so many programs, classes, different events
going on with our Y.
We don't have enough time.
We really don't.
That's why we got to have you guys in at least
a couple of times a month,
just to be able to talk about all this stuff.
So if you are interested, you want to find out more,
do a deep dive on your local Y
and find out more.
You can do that again by going to SWCYMCA.org.
SWCYMCA.org.
Be sure to follow the South of County YMCA on social media.
It's a great follow, great way to keep up
on everything in your community.
Thank you both so much for all you do.
Thanks for kicking off our new year with the show.
Appreciate the time and welcome to the community back.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
And always good to see you.
Thanks again for being here Stephanie.
Appreciate the time.
Absolutely, thanks for having us.
We'll have more Midday magazine for you tomorrow right here
at 975 FM 1320 AM WF HR.
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