And good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It is time now for our community connection right here on Gay one, the one you trust and Ian Studio. Today we got the Boys and Girls Club Bartos, Philip Jason bart is here with it.
You brought a friend, I get well, I bought re Arch.
Gateway.
Yes. Yeah, we're for inciate to have Gateway involved with the Boys and Girls Club and proud sponsors and so we invited him as guests here.
Now. We've got a big to do coming up here very very shortly, and it is something that we do every year and it's really a bright spot in our community.
Yeah we do we uh next Friday the thirteenth, Friday the thirteenth, Yeah, we have our seventieth anniversary Youth of the Year, Great Futures Luncheon at the Boys and Girls Club. So getting ramped up for that and we're excited and Gateways leaned in as the sponsor for it this year, and we're extremely thankful for their support of the club.
And Chris with Gateway involved here, you know, you see the youth of America every darn day.
Oh yeah, yeah, I've seen it all from coaching to you know, being an athletic director and then moving over to banking and being fortunate enough to sponsor events like this. This Youth the Youth of the Year event is absolutely incredible. If you've never attended it, get your tickets, get there and attend it. It's incredible to honor these youth and see what they've done over the last year, and it's incredible.
And Jason talking a little bit about what these kids have won here in Bartisville the Youth of the Year four Bartsville and then they've gone on before and won the state and even competed in the national Youth of the Year. Is that correct.
Yeah, We've had a number of winners over the last ten twelve years that have advanced on to the state competition and they've won the state competition and they move on to a regional competition. The ultimate goal of this whole thing with Youth of the Year program is to leverage some scholarship dollars for them that it would be
hard to get otherwise. And each Boys and Girls club puts their you know, their best kid forward and we'll have a panel of judges come in on Wednesday night and they'll go through a judging deal with the kids, with our finalists, and we'll name a winner and they'll go on and we'll see what we can get. I know, we have a couple that went through got all their degree, one through graduate school and is working on PhD. And all of that is paid for through the Youth of
the Year program. So it's a great opportunity for our kids. And as much as they are not huge fans of public speaking, we try to jump over that hurdle to get them to see, you know, this can provide a lot of opportunities for them after high school.
You know, the Boys in the Girls club is it really extended itself with a lot of different opportunities. We have the duty facility and of course here and we've got the STEM program going and it just seems like every time we turn around there's something new, something really engaging for the kids.
Yeah, we we try to keep it new and fresh and new ideas, and our program staff do an excellent job is spending time every day trying to you know, change it up and create new opportunities for them. The Dewey program has really taken off for us. We knew there was a need out there when we Uh, when we brought that facility out there and we're you know, we're over one hundred kids a day and it's it's a full house, you know, in Dewey. So we're we're glad that you know, that's there for them, and it
alleviated some space issues that we had in Bartlesville. So we were able to bring some kids off the weight list in Bartlesville by moving the Dewey kids to their facility and getting them their own place and stuff.
So it's helped.
It's helped here as well with some of the pressure we had with that weight list.
I mean, tickets we got left for this bit, very very very few.
Yeah, we got.
We uh. This year, we're fortunate enough we had the opportunity we're bringing in join her Cursey as our keynote speaker and Gateway has helped us tremendously with that. And she's obviously Olympic gold medalist and world record holder and you know, so we we uh, we're excited to hear her message. She's been involved in the youth world post career.
When she got done with her her career, she leaned in on some youth stuff and has been instrumental in some stuff in East Saint Louis that we're excited to hear her story, and that's that's not something we could have done without Gateway leaning in and helping us get her here.
She is the consummate package when you talk about an American Olympian. She didn't just go out do her thing and say where's the check as she put her God given gifts to great use for the future.
Oh yeah, she's by far one of the if not the greatest female athlete ever. You know, she's three time gold medalist winner one she won the bronze once when the silver wants in a he tathla on which I mean, guys, that's just it. Yeah, like going out. I mean, you gotta throw the javelin and the shot and you gotta do it all. Yeah, I mean, it's it's incredible to that sort of athlete. But I was reading a little bit about her, and uh, I didn't know that she
started at UCLA on the basketball team as well. Uh huh for a four year starter as a forward, that's a that's it. So she played college basketball and ran track and went on to compete in the Olympics, Olympic gold and world record holder Holy smokes, guys, she's coming right here to talk to these kids, and what she's done is unbelievable. So kudos to Jason and his team for getting Jackie to come speak to these kids into everybody. I'm excited, you know, just like all the kids.
Great, I'm impressireate, free moment and you got her in a good spot. Yeah.
Yeah. We were usually first Friday of December, but she said, I can do it if you can move the date by one week, and we moved the date by week.
Obviously get great. Ohiyes.
We'd had to regard at the podium and nobody.
Wants to that. How do we go about getting the tickets for these You can call the club.
There are minimal left, but you can call the club nine one eight three three six three six three six.
And what can we look forward to coming up in the new year and twenty twenty five for the boys and girls.
Well, hopefully another state winner at the Youth of the Year competition. And I'd love to start us off well the first quarter, but you know, we'll do a Harley party thing and get ramped up for summer program. So we'll we'll continue to do what we do and find some new things that the kids are excited about.
All right, this is great, and thank you for being a part of.
This absolutely absolutely gateway. We love the sport, the community, we love support the kids definitely in sports and academics, all of it, all the way around. So we're excited and very very honored to be a part of the Boys and Girls Club.
All right, get those tickets. We're probably talking about a dozen or so if.
That, yeah, less than that probably, Yeah. Now they'll be gone by noon today.
I assure you. Thank you for being on board with us. And if folks want to make a generous contribution, you know, year in time is coming around, can they do that?
They absolutely can.
We I thought i'd ask you had a banker at the same time.
Yeah, we we're heavily relying on our community. We you know, we're not a fee based program. We you know, twenty dollars gets a kid in the door for the school year and gets dinner every night and help with homework. And so we're we're relying on corporate sponsors, individual donors as much as we possibly can in this community. And we're you know, we turned seventy years old this year and it's it's been around a little bit and this community continues to support the Boys and Girls Club and
we're we're thankful for it. So it's key to what we do and we can't keep our dues low without the community leaning in to support it. Oldest Boys and Girls Club in the state of Oklahoma. So a lot of a lot of really good history. When you have Joe Allen Low for the first twenty years of your organization, you're off to a pretty good start.
I'd say, and it's good good seed. Hey, thank you guys for both coming in bright and early on his Chilia tourday morning.
Thank you very much.
Thank you folks you've been watching and listening to our community connection.