A photo from the game.
Missouri Youth Cricket Association | Photo Gallery
Received from USYCA Affiliate Missouri Youth Cricket Association:
Missouri Youth Cricket Association (MYCA), an organization that was formed in December 2012, has progressed to hard ball within a year and is competing in the inaugural NYCL 2014 Tournament for Level U12 starting July 4. USYCA supported MYCA last year with funding for the cricket pitch and also provided cricket sets for schools. MYCA has introduced cricket in 24 schools so far, and many more are coming.
On March 11, the MYCA U13 team travelled to Bollingbrook, Illinois to play a hardball match with BPL Youth. MYCA is very thankful to Sundar Ramakrishnan, Chidambar and Mir Ali and rest of the BPL Community for their hospitality and hosting the match and providing this great first competitive experience for our players.
Both the sides had some players as young as eight years old and they all stood tall and tough against the older players, indicating that for cricket, if you have the heart, the size snd age does not matter.
MYCA team returned from the event with a very high spirit, and is looking forward to the BPL team coming to Missouri for a match. We made some great friends at BPL and this could be the beginning of a rise in youth cricket at the grassroots level in the Midwest.
I want to take a moment at this point to share something about the Schools Program of USYCA: Does it really work?
MYCA has eight kids out of 23 in the MYCA Cricket Academy who were connected due to the School Program that MYCA conducted. We have three coaches in our Academy (Christina Tucker, Susan Harris and Matthew Clark) who never played cricket before, but due to school/community cricket camps, got connected and now two of the three are ICC Level 1 certified cricket coaches, and they are aggressively working towards youth cricket development in our region.
It is true that schools are a little slow to adapt but it’s like a seed. Some seeds sprout quickly and some take a long time. But the only possibility of the seed sprouting is if we plant them. USYCA has done this over last few years and the impact will be steadily visible in the time to come.
If you live in Midwest Region and you would like your child to get involved with cricket, or if you already have a club and would like to set up interclub games, please let us know.
Regards,
Priya Singh
Missouri Youth Cricket Association (MYCA) http://mocricket.org/