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'This is the place to be'
By JACKIE RIPLEY, Times Staff Writer TOWN 'N COUNTRY -- Bill Beekley has the kind of job a lot of people would envy. He spends his days playing football, basketball and soccer -- and even gets to bring his dog to work. "That's Brutus," said Beekley motioning to the photo of a 4-year-old bull dog amid a scattering of magazine cutouts and drawings taped to the walls of his office. "He's the club mascot." The 42-year-old Beekley, a senior recreation specialist for Hillsborough County, shares the office at Jackson Springs recreation center with Jennie Pearson, director of the Town 'N Country Boys & Girls Club. Beekley heads up the county portion of the partnership with the Boys & Girls Club; Pearson runs the Boys & Girls Club side. Together they make it work. The 15-year-old Town 'N Country Boys & Girls Club, one of the largest in the county, serves 300 children in the summer and 150 after-schoolers. The national program is credited with keeping generations of kids off the streets and out of trouble. "This is the place to be," Pearson said. "I've had parents asking me, 'What do I have to do to get in?' " With families accustomed to paying $80 a week for day care, that's a bargain being able to enroll a child in the Boys & Girls Club at $80 for the entire summer. "The waiting list is very long," said Pearson explaining the lottery system used to fill the roughly 300 openings at the club. Pearson said 400 children were registered for the lottery, about half got in. Priority was given to those already enrolled in the club's after-school program. A 10,000-square-foot gym, scheduled to be open later this month, will enable the club to provide additional room for indoor activities. "We really worked with a lot of folks to make this (gym) happen," said Boys & Girls Club president Roy Opfer. The gym, which cost $1.4-million, will include a basketball/volleyball court, weight room and offices. It will serve children and adults in the Town 'N Country area. "It'll be air-conditioned," said 14-year-old Jovanna York, who goes to Orange Grove Middle School. A member of the club for eight years, she coaches basketball for boys and girls ages 9-12. Jovanna is growing up in the program. So did Pearson, 26, who was in the sixth-grade when the Jackson Springs center opened in the mid 1980s. With a father whose military job required travel, and a mother who worked outside the home, the club was a blessing for her. "I was at an age where I didn't really fit into a group," said Pearson who recalled how a counselor helped her through a difficult adolescent stage. "I wasn't quite old enough for the big girls and too old for the young ones." Beekley has similar memories of the coaches at the Boys Club of West Tampa. "It was the first time an adult took that much time and seemed to be concerned," said Beekley whose mother worked and whose father was dying of cancer. As Beekley grew older he took a summer job with the Boys & Girls Club. "I found myself wanting to play and wanting to help out," Beekley said. No question there are all kinds of games and activities at Jackson Springs -- from basketball, soccer and whiffle ball to pingpong, pool and Foosball. The children also take field trips to the zoo, aquarium and Museum of Science of Industry. "It's cool," said Matthew Brandy, 9, who lives in Town 'N Country and goes to school at Faith Outreach Academy. The Boys & Girls Club also is a pretty accurate reflection of the neighborhood, at least one-third of which is Hispanic. "It's the Hispanic kids versus the American kids," shouts 10-year-old Nikko Livsey, standing amid a group of boisterous 10 year olds. "It's baseball, whiffle ball and war inside." The friendly competition among the two groups is "meant in a fun way," Jovanna said. The Town 'N Country Boys & Girls Club is open to all young people, age 6 to 18. Mostly though, it targets children whose families are primarily lower income and concentrates on teaching responsible citizenship. "It's important for young people to have goals and to reinforce that they can keep moving forward," said Opfer, club president. "It's important to have an internal direction. It tends to keep them out of trouble more than anything else." The clubs are staffed the same way a licensed day care center is. They adhere to many of the standards of a licensed facility, such as counselor-child ratios (one for every 25 children) and employee background checks. Counselors undergo drug tests and fingerprinting. Opfer said the organization is in the midst of a long range plan that aims to double the number of youths served countywide. Currently, the organization serves 7,500 children in Hillsborough County. "There's a sense of belonging, it's there," Pearson said. "Everybody wants to belong to something." -- Jackie Ripley can be reached at (813) 269-5308 or ripley@sptimes.com.
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