Boys & Girls Club Members to Attend Cal Ripken, Sr. Baseball Camp

NEW ALBANY, Miss. (Press Release) — Five members of the New Albany Boys & Girls Club will have the opportunity to attend the Cal Ripken, Sr. Baseball Camp in Aberdeen, MD at the end of this month. Artaveion High, Michael Smith, Quentavious Gray, Artavious Smith-Nugent, Jadien Deaton will travel with New Albany Unit Director Tommie Bledsoe to spend their first week of summer break learning the game of baseball with some of the nation’s finest instructors and youth from throughout the country.

The camp provides an opportunity for deserving young people from across the country to come together for a week to learn baseball the “Ripken Way” while simultaneously developing life-long character traits that will help them continue on the path to success. The entire Ripken program is based on Cal, Sr.’s philosophy that “everything you do in baseball, you do in life; and everything you do in life, you do in baseball.”

The New Albany Club recently received its third grant from the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation through the assistance of the Mississippi Department of Human Services. The grant supports the Badges For Baseball Program, a multi-faceted crime prevention and mentoring program that conveys the tenets of the “Ripken Way” to youth through a variety of programs, including Healthy Choices, Healthy Children and baseball themed activities. It also partners youth with caring adults in local law enforcement to enhance and enliven these lessons.

In 2013, Bledsoe along with members Carl McKinney, Lige Foster, N’Shaun Cameron, Drayton Wilson and Jaylen Chaney attended the camp. Bledsoe received recognition for Counselor of the Week.