Summer youth sports camp may close

About 350 low-income children in Eastern Washington and North Idaho may have to find new ways to spend summer days after funding for a national sports camp with a 17-year history in Pullman was cut from the federal budget.

Organizers at Washington State University are scrambling to repair cuts to the local branch of the National Youth Sports Program, which last summer provided five weeks of child care, sports camps and meals to poor local families, including about 50 children from the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.

Options include asking local cities to pay to transport kids to the WSU site, said Cedric Price, the university’s program director.

But it’s doubtful whether full services – or any services – will be available to families who have relied on the free program for half of each summer, Price said. At best, only about $40,000 will be available for the 18th year of WSU’s program, which has had an annual budget of about $70,000, Price said.

“I have absolutely no idea what they’re going to do,” Price said. “It’s not like these families have a lot of options. They can’t just cough up $500 for basketball camp or soccer camp.”

Ninety percent of children enrolled in the camp must meet poverty guidelines, he said.

The National Youth Sports Program has operated for 37 years, providing sports instruction for some 2 million young people at 202 colleges and universities across the country, all with federal assistance, organizers said.

Last year, it was targeted for removal from President Bush’s 2006 budget because it was considered too narrowly focused, duplicated other programs and was noncompetitive, budget documents indicated.

Despite intensive lobbying efforts, the program was axed from the final budget by Bush and Congress. Perhaps $2 million in carryover funds from the federal Health and Human Services budget may be allocated to the program through the National Youth Sports Corp., Gale Wiedow, national director of the agency that supports National Youth Sports Program, said Tuesday.

Corporation officials agreed to allocate up to $40,000 to 50 individual programs, but they received applications from 179 programs from across the country. “There’s only so much money to go around,” Wiedow said.

Local program organizers will learn by early next week whether they’ve been selected for funding. Priority likely will go to large programs in high-need areas, Wiedow acknowledged.

“Things in Pullman aren’t going to be the same when they put 300 or 400 kids on the street in the summer,” he said.

Still, WSU organizers hope to find some support to continue the program.

“For the kids that we are targeting, I don’t see how you can disregard the services we do,” Price said.