Transcript: Beep KickballA New Sport for Children with Visual Impairments

HadleyBeep KickballA New Sport for Children with Visual ImpairmentsPresented by Judy ByrdDate July 6th, 2016

Larry MuffettWelcome to Seminars@Hadley. My name is Larry Muffett. I’m a member of Hadley’s seminars team and I also work in curricular affairs. Today’s seminar topic is Beep Kickball, A New Sport for Children with Visual Impairments. Our presenter today is Judy Byrd. Judy is the director of the Beep Kickball Association. Today Judy’s gonna discuss the who, what, where, and how and why of beep kickball. So, let me welcome Judy and we’ll get under way. Good morning and welcome, Judy.

Judy Byrd

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Hello everyone. Thank you for coming to this seminar. We’ll start with telling you what I plan to talk about today and then get into it. And I love questions, so please don’t hesitate to either type them in on your screen or call in.

First I’d like to talk about how I stumbled into this. This is not something I did until about 10 years ago and I’ll tell you all about that. I’d like to tell you about where beep kickball is played, who plays beep kickball, and how it’s played. That will be the first half of the segment. The second half of the segment I’ll talk about how kids benefit and – this is what I really love to talk about – how can we help kids who are blind or visually impaired become more physically active? That’s sort of the big picture. And how can we help them reach their potential?

So I will get started with telling you how I stumbled into this. I have a mother who has macular degeneration. She’s 94 years old. In 2008, I was driving across the country and I was listening to an audio book. The name of the book was Crashing Through and it was all about Mike May. By the way I have listed a bunch of resources so you won’t

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have to scramble down and take notes, and I’ve listed books, websites, etc. The name of the book was Crashing Through. It was all about Mike May, who lost his vision when he was 3 years old due to a chemical explosion, and when he was in his 40s, he had the opportunity to regain his sight through an operation. So he not only had to make the decision whether he would like to take the risk to do that, it’s all about the operation and the aftereffects. It’s a fascinating book; I highly recommend it.

Anyway, it dawned on me at that point – because I was an empty nester and getting towards the end of my career, but not quite, I decided to go down to the Center for the Visually Impaired in downtown Atlanta to volunteer. So after being there for about two years, they asked me to help start a beep baseball team. Now, how many of you have heard of beep baseball and are familiar with the game? If you’ll just type in “yes” that would be great.

So I said yes, and I was standing out on the field after a couple of weeks, and I thought, hmm, looks like all the players are older teenagers and adults. I wonder what the kids play? And I was totally a

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novice to blind sports and almost, really, to the blind community, other than just the two years of a little bit of this and a little bit of that, so I thought, well, surely somebody has thought of this. I Googled it and found out nobody had thought of the sport of beep kickball. So I thought, well, if you just use the same rules as beep baseball, the same field, the same concept, and instead of a baseball and a bat you use a kickball, perfect, there you go; we have beep kickball.

So I thought, well, this will be easy to experiment with. I’ll just go out and buy a kickball, a beeping kickball, and there’s a camp for kids who are blind – it just happened to be the first BELL camp in Atlanta – and I got in touch with them and went out on the field with the kids, with this beeping ball, and I had a very interesting experience. It was not exactly a no-brainer. The first thing that happened is the kids said to me, “I can’t hear the ball. I can’t hear the ball.” And I realized they could not hear the ball because it was pretty buried in foam; it had no hole to let sound out. The second thing that happened was the first kid that kicked the ball, it kind of wobbled down the field, and it was because the mechanism was not centered. And

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the third thing that happened is a player kicked the ball and the sound went off. And what happened was he just kicked the toggle switch and the sound went off.

So I took the ball home, I cut it open – I’ve always been sort of a tinkerer – I tried to fix the things that were wrong, I taped it back up with duct tape, and brought it back out to play with the kids again, and that was the beginning of a lot of failures. It would break again, and so I’d go home and fix it again, and it would break again, and fix it again, and break again. And so, eventually, after a year and getting a little bit of help from here and there, I came up with a design, and that is the kickball that you see in the picture.

By the way, the website is www.beepkickball.com and everything that – more than you would like to know – is on that website all about not only kickball, but other sports and ideas as well. So you can buy a kickball off of that site.

Now, I’m going to do a little audio show and tell here. This is – it looks like most of you are familiar

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with the beep baseball. I’m going to remind you how it sounds. I’m gonna sort of mute it because it can be kind of loud when you put it right into a speaker. Here you go. [Beeping sound] That’s a beep baseball. The kickball sounds like – I’m also going to mute it because it can be quite loud – [Beeping sound]. Save the sound of the bases for when I get into explaining how you play kickball.

So anyway, now, six years later, I have sold about 350 beep kickballs, mostly in the United States, although, Canada and Australia seem to have ordered quite a few. And there are 37 out of the 50 states where kickballs have been ordered, so it’s that widespread in the country. That accounts for over 200 different locations. Beep kickball seems to be most popular, of course, in Georgia, because that’s where I’m located, in Atlanta. And in New York, it’s second most popular. Texas is third most popular, and California being the fourth most popular. And it’s spread all over lots of other states. So that’s where beep kickball is played.

If you are located somewhere and would like to find out where it’s played close to you, just send me an email or a text message or give me a call –

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I’ll post my contact information on here in a minute – and I’ll be happy to tell you.

So who plays kickball? Well, we start with little kids. We like kids who are 4 years old and just beginning to learn their motor skills, up until about 8 years old. We group those kids together and we teach them the mechanics of kicking and running and fielding the ball, and we even teach them how to throw an overhead pass with the kickball. It’s very important to this age group to begin to learn that, yes, they can be active and, yes, they can play sports. Their parents realize when watching them get out on the field and play that they can indeed be physically active in a very safe way.

The next group that it’s extremely popular with in terms of playing a game is the elementary aged kids, about 9-12. By the way, on the website I give lots of pointers about how to work with different groups. So, elementary kids love playing the game. They seem to be the most enthusiastic. They seem to understand and pick up the rules. The younger kids, little kids 4-8 years old, they’re not quite ready to deal with rules and a game. Middle schoolers love the game. I’ve had kickball

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teams with middle schoolers. High schoolers love to fool around with it. They’re almost too cool to play, but if you give them a ball, they will have a good time. Young adults like to play it in a picnic setting. It’s great for reunions. It’s great for just a pickup activity. And older adults really benefit from it with rehab groups.

I see that you can’t really hear the ball. Let me not mute it and I’m gonna put it a little closer to the speaker. So here is what the beep kickball sounds like. [Beeping sounds] Please let me know if you can’t hear it. This is what the beep baseball sounds like. [Beeping sounds] I didn’t blow you out there. And thank you for that feedback.

I told you a little bit about how I stumbled into this, where beep kickball is played, and who plays it. Let me get into how it’s played and then I’m going to field some questions. Beep kickball is played with three pieces of equipment. The first piece of equipment is a blindfold. As you know, lots of blind sports are played with blindfolds. Beep baseball is played with a blindfold, as well as goalball, and kickball is, too, in order to level the playing field for the differences in vision. There is a beep kickball,

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which you can see the picture of it. It’s 10 inches in diameter. It’s a soft foam ball. It’s very lightweight, and if it bumps somebody on the head, it will not hurt them. I can speak from experience. And the other piece of equipment is there are two buzzing bases; first base and third base. Now, we play on a field set up like a baseball diamond, just like beep baseball and just like regular kickball, and there is no second base; only a first base and a third base, just like in beep baseball. There is no pitcher in beep kickball. And there is no throwing the ball; once the ball is retrieved in the field, it’s just kept. And there is no running around the bases from first to second to third to home.

This is how it’s played. Okay. Each team has five players. Now, you can even play with less than five players. You can squeeze a sixth player in there. A lot of times I’ll play with uneven teams; four kids on one team, five kids on another. That’s not a big deal. It’s a very flexible sport.

What happens is on the field the kids – there are five players out in the field with blindfolds on. One

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player is standing near first base, one player is standing near third base, there’s another player standing dead set in the middle a little closer to the kicker, and then there are two players in the back field, one on the left and one on the right. And what we like to do is we like to stagger the players so that when they move from left to right, they do not move so they’ll hit another player. They have a totally open field from left to right that we teach them to go forward to the ball and to go backwards maybe just step or two, but if it goes by them, to let the fielders in the rear get the ball. So that’s how we keep the field safe. We expect for more than one player at a time to go for the ball, but we expect them to be talking to each other so they know where the other player is. So that’s the field setup.

Now, what happens on the batter end – the kicker end – the umpire hands a beeping kickball to the kicker, who is, of course, on home plate, and he has a choice of doing one of three things. He puts the kickball down on the ground, so he knows exactly where it is, and he kicks it. Or he can put it down on the ground and take a step back and kick it, or even a couple of steps back; he can run and

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kick it, depending on how skilled he is. Or he can drop kick it. Any of those methods are fine. So once the kicker kicks the ball – and usually, if he has a clean miss or if he fouls the ball off, it’s just like baseball; you get three kicks. But usually most kids are successful on the first kick or two.

So he kicks the ball and the fielder’s job is to locate and pick up the ball. And his job is to listen to which base that buzzes, either first or third, and run directly to that base and tag the base. Now what we use is – you can use anything. The real backup plan if you don’t have bases, which can be expensive, would be a person standing on first and third base, a volunteer, and clapping their hands. That’s totally acceptable. What we use are the beep baseball bases, which are the blue towers that come up to about your waist. And so the kicker, his job is to go tag the base, either first or third, whichever buzzes. The bases buzz randomly, so he’s not gonna know. Part of the skillset is to listen for the base and figure out which base is buzzing and run and tag the base. His job is to tag the base before the fielders pick up the ball. If the fielder picks up the ball before he tags the base, he’s out. If he tags the base before a fielder picks

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up the ball, he’s safe and he scores a run and the next kicker gets up.

There is a foul line. If he doesn’t kick the ball any further than 30 feet, it’s a foul. So there’s no bunting in beep kickball. He has to kick it far enough out into the field for it to be a fair ball. And, of course, the first base and the third base lines are the foul. If he kicks it out of those two lines, then it’s a foul ball.

Now, they are the basics. There’s a little more – there is a field spotter just like in beep baseball, but I’m gonna leave that for now for a little bit later.

There are three outs per inning, six innings, game over, just like in beep baseball.

I would like to field questions at this point. You can either type them into your screen or you can speak into the speaker if you have one.

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Larry MuffettOkay, folks, I’m gonna release the microphone here in a second and go ahead queue up and have some questions for Judy.

QuestionSo no one’s really in control over which base begins to beep after you kick the ball? It’s just random?

Judy ByrdOh, yes. That’s correct, it’s random, but what we have is bases [Inaudible 0:18:38] that go into a switchbox, and that switchbox operator sits behind the home plate and they have a toggle switch that will switch on first base or third base. And so what happens is that particular person just randomly switches a base on. Does that answer your question?

Larry MuffettOther questions for Judy?

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QuestionDo they tend to switch the base on that’s farthest away from the direction the ball went to, or can they turn it on if the ball went that direction? I don’t know how fair that would be.

Judy ByrdDuring a totally fair game, according to the rules, it needs to be random. However, when I’ve got a group of kids out there who are not as experienced and not playing a totally competitive game and they’re sort of new to the sport, a lot of times if the ball is kicked down the third base or on the third base side of the field, I will buzz the first base purely for safety purposes, and vice versa. So that’s a great question.

Larry MuffettI’m sure the question is burning in somebody’s mind. You talked about we could buy the balls from you. What does it cost for the equipment for this game, for the ball and for the bases?

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Judy ByrdYou can purchase the ball off of only one website, www.beepkickball.com. The ball costs a $140 and $15 shipping charges, for a total of $155. I hate that it’s so expensive, but it costs me about $75 to make the ball. The bases, your regular beep baseball bases, the blue towers cost $300 a set, and they are ordered not through me, but through the Denver Pioneers. And the information about where you can order those is not only on the beep baseball national website, NBBA.org, but it’s also on my website. Now, there’s an alternative. There are buzzers that you can buy. You can pretty much use any type of equipment that you can afford that you feel like will work, from just an audio sound device, you can have a volunteer who is speaking, you can have a volunteer clapping their hands, etc. So there are lots of suggestions on the kickball website. And you buy blindfolds – the cheapest place to buy a blindfold is the Dollar Store for $1.00 a blindfold. And if you want regulation, fancier blindfolds, I’ve got information on that as well.

How do you solve the problem of the kickball continuing to break? The kickball has replaceable

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parts. That’s the good news. The major cost of the kickball is the cost of the ball itself. The foam ball, it costs $25 for me. I don’t have the advantage of making thousands of these and subbing it out to China, so it’s quite expensive for me to make the ball. However, all the parts are replaceable.

There are four holes in the ball, two of them are the speakers, and they’re replaceable. If one of them breaks, all you do is take the back off, pull the part out, unclip it, clip the new part back in – which costs $20, by the way. And, usually, if you’ll send me a kickball back that’s broken, I’ll replace it and fix it for free. And the foot button switch, which is the on/off switch, is replaceable. And the batteries last about 20 hours, and so you will get quite a life out of the batteries. They are also replaceable, however, and they can even be bought at RadioShack if there’s still one in your neighborhood. You can manually replace those or you can get a part that switches out. Like I say, it’s $20.

But I have encouraged everybody, and I keep trying to follow up with people and make sure their balls are still working. I have had an unbelievable

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low incidence of balls breaking. I’ve probably fixed, out of the 350 balls I’ve sold, maybe, maybe, 10-15 balls at the most. And I don’t mind fixing them. I love for you to send me your ball back because it tells me what broke and it helps me know what areas are problem areas.

Any more questions about that?

Okay. So let’s talk about the second half here. The second half of what I’d like to talk about is how kids benefit and how can we really help kids who are blind or visually impaired become more physically active?

How do kids benefit? Well, any team sport, they benefit the same way. They benefit by getting exercise. They benefit by learning about teamwork and all about fairness; what is fair and what isn’t fair. They learn to resolve conflict. They build up confidence in building their skills and just becoming more and more physically fit. They have fun. They learn perseverance to keep trying over and over. They learn about leadership. And they also learn about self-advocacy. In any sport,

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regardless of who plays it, those are the benefits, seems, to everyone.

But our particular group of kids, who are blind and visually impaired, benefit in additional ways. They learn more and are able to practice their mobility. They learn lots about orientation when they’re standing out in the field. It’s very important to know exactly where you are, where the other players are when they count off, where the bases are. You can hear them buzzing, and that’s’ good practice. They have lots of practice with their motor skills – kicking, running, fielding – and lots of practice with their communication and listening skills. It’s very important out in the field. They have a tendency to become more independent, which we all want. And it provides – beep kickball provides – as well as goalball and beep baseball – provides a team sport when there are just not as many opportunities for kids who are blind or visually impaired to participate. Which I’m gonna talk about more in a minute.

So that’s how kids benefit. Now, this is really what my mission has grown into. My mission, you’ll notice on the website, is to just give everyone an

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opportunity to play sports. But that has been broadened and will be expanded, probably within about the week. Now my mission is: How can we help kids who are blind and visually impaired, and adults, become more physically active? I have about six different ways and six different things that I’m working on.

The first way is to attend a sports camp for the blind. And there are lots of them in the United States, actually all over the world, but one that I have been working with and gotten very involved with is Camp Abilities. Camp Abilities is located all over the world. They have about 25 Camp Abilities all over the world and about 18 in the United States, and that is a camp that’s being replicated. And the founder, Lauren Lieberman’s, goal is to have a camp within a half a day’s driving distance of every child who is visually impaired or blind, and that will make at least for 50 camps.

At Camp Abilities, the campers get to try out lots of different sports and recreations. They get to make friends. They learn to advocate for themselves so that they can go back to their school and participate in PE class and talk to their coach and

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talk to their teachers about what they need in terms of adaptations to get involved in a school team. A track team is a good example. A swim team. They also learn to advocate for themselves in the neighborhood, with playing with the neighborhood kids, playing with their friends, and playing with their family. They specifically learn what works for them in this camp. They are advised about all sorts of equipment, what the best color is, what the best size is, etc. etc.; all sorts of little adaptations that work specifically for them. Camp Abilities – I’ve got the website on the text.

Second thing that I think that would help kids is if they are more involved in PE class in their school. We still find that there are lots of PE classes in public school, and even private schools, that are not including the kids who are blind and visually impaired, though there is an effort to help the teachers figure out how they can include them and how they can provide adaptations that will help the kids participate. A great example is when a student is running; he just needs a guide, and they can be all sorts of guide techniques, and we’re not only teaching the children, but teaching the teachers how kids can participate.

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The third thing, which I’m going to hopefully try in Atlanta within the next year, is field day. Kids who are blind and visually impaired would benefit from having their own field day. I only know two locations that do this so far. I’m sure there are more. But there’s a Sports Extravaganza in Texas, right outside of Dallas. They attract over 200 blind and visually impaired and it’s quite a weekend. And it’s outside Dallas. And the other one that I know of is in Asheville, North Carolina, and they attract about 25 kids. Now that’s a very rural area, so the fact that they have 25 kids come in on a school day and participate in sports is really, really good. These kids get to try out three or four different sports in Asheville, and even more in Texas. So that would be something that should be available to kids in every community, and I’m hoping someday that will be the case.

The fourth thing that would help kids be more physically active would be more team sports. We have goalball, which is mainly played out of schools for the blind, and there’s a great competition network set up for that. And it’s becoming more and more popular because USABA,

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United States Association of Blind Athletes – which I have the website on the text – is promoting goalball and funding new teams, paying for the equipment, which is wonderful. And it’s also beginning to catch on on a university level. So goalball, I think, has a nice future. It’s been around, by the way, since World War II and was invented for blinded veterans, and is a Paralympic sport.

Beep baseball has a big national network. There are lots of teams, mostly in major cities, and they come together every year in August to compete in the Beep Baseball World Series. And this year that competition is in Ames, Iowa. Beep baseball has been around since the mid 70’s when somebody – the ball was actually invented in the mid 60’s for the Colorado School for the Blind – but in the mid 70’s the rules became more exciting, and so the sport took off. Older teams and adults play beep baseball.

Goalball starts age-wise about in middle school and on up. There are adult goalball teams as well. Beep kickball is more of a recreational sport at this point. There are official rules, which are on the

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website, and there have not really been leagues established yet. I’ve attempted to do that in Atlanta and it’s seems like every time I get two or three teams going, two or three teams stop, and so it’s been a tough thing to do because the kids are so spread out. But we’re continuing to attempt to do that.

There are all sorts of other sports available for kids and adults. There are sports and recreational opportunities for people with visual impairments, and it’s also listed in the text, as well as the Encyclopedia of Sports and Recreation for People with Visual Impairments written by Andrew Leibs, L-E-I-B-S. And it’s a great book. It tells you all about many, many, many sports and recreational opportunities that most people don’t know that kids and adults who are blind and visually impaired get involved with. To name a few: golf, tennis, boating. So pick up that book; it’s very interesting exposure.

The fifth thing is something called a Fit Families Program. Most of you have probably never heard of this. A professor at Syracuse University came up with it a couple of years ago. His name is Dr. Luis

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Columna. And the goal of this program is to teach parents, siblings, and children who are blind and visually impaired to play together. In other words, most families don’t – they need the same resources in terms of teaching that we all do in terms of knowing what equipment to use and how to play sports and do recreation with a child who is blind or visually impaired. So that’s a great program. Google it. You’ll read all about it. It’s not been expanded like I would like to see it expanded, and that’s sort of, hopefully, something that will happen in the future.

The sixth thing is family advocacy training. This happens at Camp Abilities. It was just expanded to all Camp Abilities. And this is a session for parents who drop their kids off at camp and they go to a special session for the parents teaching them how they can advocate for their child, what they can expect in their PE class, and how they can help their children. So that’s a program put on by Camp Abilities and it is probably posted on the Camp Abilities site. It will tell you all about it.

I’ll stop at this point before I talk about another couple of things that I find extremely interesting

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and productive. Are there any questions at this point?

Larry MuffettJudy, we had some audio problems while you were talking about Andrew Leibs’ book, so you might want to discuss that a little bit more. And also, I pasted up here that Andrew in fact did a seminar for Hadley a couple years ago on his book and talked about blind sports and the wide range of things that are available, so I urge people if they have some interest in that regard, they can go into the seminar archives page in the past seminars and look that up. I think the title of it is Sports for People Who Are Blind and Visually Impaired, and they can listen to Andrew personally and talk about that book.

Judy ByrdThank you, Larry. Andrew Leibs is a writer, he’s a journalist, and he lives in New Hampshire, and he knows more about a wide variety of sports than anybody you can imagine. He wrote a very comprehensive book, so I’m glad to hear that he was on your program. It’s called the Encyclopedia

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of Sports and Recreation, and Larry just posted it on the text.

Are there any other questions, suggestions? Does anybody know of other field days around your area that would be helpful for us to know about? And what do you think of all those ideas?

QuestionHi, my name is Marty Hutchings and I’m Program Director for Southeastern Wisconsin Lions BOLD, which stands for Blind Outdoor Leisure Development, and we provide all sorts of activities for blind and visually impaired adults and children in Southeastern Wisconsin. Mainly a lot of what we do is not team sports, though. It’s like downhill skiing, tandem biking, horseback riding, canoeing, all that kind of stuff. But I’d like to see us get more involved in team sports. And I guess – I don’t know if Janesville – that’s where the school is for the blind up here in Wisconsin – I don’t know if they have a field day or anything like that, but that’d be a good place to start. So I’m interested in the equipment and how to put something like that together up here in Wisconsin.

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Judy ByrdThat’s great, Marty. Thank you for that information. I will tell you that in Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire and La Crosse, the adapted PE professors have ordered the ball. Stevens Point, Wisconsin I’ve shipped a ball to. Ashland, Wisconsin. And to another place in Wisconsin – Milwaukee. So lots of activity up there.

And by the way, let me mention – if you’re having a one-time event and you don’t have the resources to go out and buy $155 ball – which I always recommend if it’s an event to have two balls; it’s always nice insurance and usually you split the kids up and you give one group a ball to go practice kicking and the other group a ball to go practice fielding – I do have a loaner program, and I would – my whole goal is for the kickball to get into the hands of the kids who use it. It’s not to make a profit and it’s not to sell as many balls as I can that get used once and sit in a closet. So I’m totally open to loaners, and so thank you, Marty. I’m glad you get into so many sports and would like to – I’ll be happy to talk to you about that offline later.

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Any more questions? Okay. I’ve still got lots of things I can talk about.

There are two things that I’m particularly fond of and one is the concept of a person’s mindset. Now, if you’re familiar with TED Talks – which I love TED Talks, T-E-D Talks. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re a great resource to have. In about somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes you can learn some fascinating things by some of the best speakers in the world. And there is a speaker named Carol Dweck who came up with the concept of a mindset. And there are two different kinds of mindsets.

Let me back up a second. I’m talking about mindset. I’m talking about two different types of mindsets as talked about by Carol Dweck on TED Talks. She’s also written a book about it. One is a growth mindset and one is a fixed mindset. The concept of the fixed mindset is you were just given certain things like IQ and athletic ability and that’s all you have, and you have a certain limit in terms of your potential. That’s if you have a fixed

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mindset. If you have a growth mindset, the potential is not determined by your God-given talents, but determined by other things such as your effort and your ability to believe that you can increase your [Audio Cuts Out 0:42:10].

Recommend that you go listen to a TED Talk. If you’ve heard of the mindset concept, [Audio Cuts Out 0:42:18] I’m particularly interested in that helps kids reach their potential and about why kids are successful. She wrote a book about why kids are successful. She’s come out with another one now called Grit, just came out, and she’s also done a couple of TED Talks [Audio Cuts Out 0:42:36]. And the concept of grit is that it’s not necessarily your–

Larry MuffettJudy, you’re fading out. We’re having some issues on your end, your audio, so I’m not sure whether you’re speaking directly into the speaker or it needs to be closer, but we’re losing the audio periodically.

Judy Byrd

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I’ll pick up with the concept of grit again. If you heard me talk about the mindset and if you’ve heard of mindset, if you’ll just reply and type in “yes”.

The second concept that helps kids reach their potential and be successful is the concept of grit. Angela Duckworth – she did a TED Talk on grit, she’s written several books. It has to do with correlation between succeeding and not having a high IQ and being blessed with talent, but being curious, passionate, and working hard. And probably the most significant thing is believing failure is a temporary condition.

I’m just reading the text messages here. Okay. I would love to hear a discussion, some comments, have you heard of the concept of grit, have you heard of the concept of mindsets? My kids are grown. I wish I had heard of these when they were younger, but it’s never too late. I love working with the kids on the field in terms of thinking about these things, and they are very interesting to look into and learn all about.

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Any more questions? I’ll talk a little bit more about the game itself if there are no more questions.

Let’s go back and talk about the game of beep kickball again. I have all sorts of pointers on the website about how you can take a group of 10 kids and play kickball with them, how you can take a group of 25 kids – which I wouldn’t make it any more than 25 and make sure you have lots of volunteers and divide them up into groups – and play kickball with them. You can even play with 4 or 5 kids by taking 4 kids and putting them out in the field and take the 5th child and have him kick the ball and just rotate them around. All sorts of suggestions on the website about that.

Sounds like some of you have not heard about mindset and grit, and some of you have. So that’s good. Any more areas that you’d like to go into a little bit more?

I will mention something that [Inaudible 0:45:49] always asks, and that is what was my career before I got into this? I’m 65 years old and for over 30 years I had a personal tax practice here in Atlanta.

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And I was still working while I first volunteered down at the Center for the Visually Impaired in Atlanta, and I found that I was a lot more interested – I realized I was sort of at the end of my career and ready to retire when I was a lot more interested in doing the kickball and the blind sport stuff rather than going to work. And so in 2012 I retired. I did both for about 2 years, and since then I’ve devoted full-time to this.

I hope in the future I will be more and more involved in the big picture of kids becoming more physically active, playing more sports, getting involved in recreation, playing with their friends, playing with their schoolmates, sharing physical activities with their families, with their neighborhood, and being included in many more groups that are physically active. So that’s sort of where I’m going – that’s sort of my big picture mission as we speak.

And that’s why I like to talk about what are the things that we can do to help kids become more physically active, and that’s why I’ve gotten involved with helping promote Camp Abilities and these other programs, like the Family Advocacy

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program and the Fit Families program. And I try to promote team sports as much as I can, as well as the recreation.

Let me read a question to you. “Our biggest frustration with getting out to the kids for the BOLD program is getting the word out that we’re available. How do you get the information out to the kids and how do you get the parents to let their kids participate? That is the million dollar question and if anybody out there knows the answer, please let me know.”

That has been also the most frustrating thing for me. I just had an opportunity with [Inaudible 0:48:23] to put together a little summer beep kickball team, and it just didn’t happen because we just couldn’t get the schedule together. Kids are so spread out in Atlanta. With Atlanta metro area being so big and the traffic being not the best, we always have a hard time getting the kids to participate. The Center for the Visually Impaired in downtown Atlanta helps me get a lot of the information out to the parents, but still, it’s tough.

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The way I get the information out about beep kickball to the nation and to the world is I go to national conventions and present seminar sessions. I’m getting ready to go to the Association of Educators and Rehabilitators in Jacksonville, Florida at the end of the month and we’ll be giving a session there. I gave a session to an O&M conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee not too long ago. If there’s a field day that an organization is putting on, I always like to participate in that. A sports day – love to participate in those. I chose to go up to Camp Abilities in Brockport, New York, the flagship camp, last summer, and that was a wonderful experience because I’m not a trained adapted PE teacher. I actually am a teacher by degree, but the only thing I ever did with that was teach high school math my first year out of college. Then I sort of segued over to the accounting end and the tax end. I love to get the word out, but after six years now, I’m still amazed that somebody has not heard of beep kickball, and I love to spread the word.

So it sounds like this seminar is over. I appreciate your participation and I look forward to hearing from any of you. Go to my website,

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www.beepkickball.com; you can get my contact information, which I’ll type in right now, and don’t hesitate to contact me about anything.

JudyByrd@gmail.com and 770-317-2035 is my telephone number. I’ll be happy to help you in any way. And spread the word in your area about the fact that I will do a loaner kickball and that you can always improvise for the bases. The most important thing is that the kids get out there and get to play, and get to be physically active, and get to discover that they actually like being physically active, and that they like playing sports, and they find certain things that they’re interested in and they will hopefully pursue them and participate in them for the rest of their lives. Thank you very much and I’m signing off right now if it’s okay. Bye, bye.

Larry MuffettThank you, Judy. I want to let everyone know that this seminar, like all of Hadley’s seminars, will be archived on our website and available for your use anytime around the clock. Also, each Hadley seminar is now made available as a podcast, which

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you can download to your computer or mobile device. I also hasten to add that for those of you who go to the archives in a couple of days when it’s up there, that we will post the resource list along with the recorded seminar.

If today’s seminar has you interested in this or related recreation topics, please check out the seminar archives and, of course, Hadley’s course list. And again, I bring up that we did have Andrew Leibs talk about this book about the Encyclopedia of Sports, and certainly encourage people to go back into the archives and listen to that one. I think they’ll find that very enlightening. Judy and I both thank you for your participation. Your questions were, as always, outstanding and added to the value of the seminar. Hadley values your feedback. Please let us know what you thought about today’s seminar, and please give us suggestions for future topics. One way to do that is by dropping us an email to feedback@hadley.edu. That’s F-E-E-D-B-A-C-K, the @ sign, H-A-D-L-E-Y dot E-D-U.

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I want to personally thank all of you for taking the time to be a part of this seminar, and again, your input adds value for those who listen to it in the recording. So again, thank you so much for being a part of this today. Hopefully, you’ll be with us again down the road and goodbye for now.

[End of Audio 0:53:32]

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