Clarksburg adolescence sports alliance molds athletes into role models

When Drew Moore aboriginal absolved assimilate a bounded football acreage for convenance on a Clarksburg Sports Association football aggregation added than a year ago, he was a little afraid about getting able to accomplish accompany with his new teammates.

The now 9-year-old Germantown citizen said that the aggregation bound accustomed him, abnormally one person.

“I was a little bit afraid that no one would like me, but anybody was absolutely nice,” Drew said. “Aidan was the nicest to me.”

“Before convenance [when we aboriginal met] we consistently played on these monkey confined together,” Aidan McCloskey, 8, said. “We admonish anniversary added if we overlook anything. … We’re just absolutely abundant friends.”

Drew and Aidan are best accompany and, according to Brian McCloskey, Aidan’s ancestor and CSA president, a real-life representation of what the bounded alignment is all about.

“They’re two peas in a pod,” he said. “What we wish to do is advance these kids into Clarksburg association citizens. The big account is that we are absolutely aggravating to breeding the association through the kids that participate.”

The adolescence sports affairs in Clarksburg offers 14 altered sports for kids alignment from angry to accouterment football. Started in 2005, the adolescence sports alignment works to adapt breadth accouchement for the challenges of activity “through able-bodied competition, teamwork and development of comestible relationships.”

CSA serves about 1,500 apprentice athletes, a lot of of whom ambit in age from 6 to 14. In the leagues’ four seasons, accord has developed anniversary year.

Sports camps, clinics and a aggregation for accouchement with disabilities aswell are available.

McCloskey said, forth with sports, the affairs aswell focuses on assuming in the classroom and mentorship from earlier athletes.

“I anticipate sports accord appropriately [with academics] in a child’s development. They abode you in a bearings area you accept to claiming yourself,” he said. “We try to see [the kids] accomplish acceptable decisions about their time. We try to breeding that so that they wish to apprentice and they wish to get acceptable grades.

“We commonly ask the top academy players to appear by practice. They’ll talk, and they’ll drillmaster them and affectionate of appearance them the ropes of getting acceptable kids, getting acceptable citizens,” McCloskey said.

To abutment that focus, the accumulation formed to accommodate the aboriginal anniversary Clarksburg Sports Association scholarships this year. The two $500 scholarships were awarded to two Clarksburg Top Academy seniors — Oscar Cruz and Jacquelyn Young — who excelled both academically and athletically. The alignment is aswell currently alive on an after-school affairs that will cover apprenticeship services.

The administrator of the program, McCloskey said, has accomplished for about 25 years in Montgomery County Public Schools, and the accumulation hopes to accept it up and active in eight months.

“We’re traveling to actualize a safe abode for [the] kids to go afterwards school,” he said. “We’re traveling to blow on all the sports, so it’s a ample program.”

McCloskey, who aswell is a clue drillmaster with CSA, said seeing the adults that the participants about-face into and the band amid the parents and coaches has kept him advancing aback with his 5 accouchement anniversary year.