“Frederick is SPECIAL,” reads a note from Chris Jenkins, general manager of the city’s brand-new minor league basketball squad, The Flying Cows, when asked about why the Frederick area was the ideal place for a new team.
Jenkins opened the team’s inaugural season in March and will be a proud proponent of local youth athletics. “The people, the businesses, the community leaders… everyone in Frederick supports everyone else in Frederick,” Jenkins says.
This is a sentiment echoed far and wide within youth sports organizations in the Frederick area. Whether teams are historic, like Frederick American Little League (FALL), celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, or new, like Maryland Area Roller Sports (MARS) Junior Roller Derby, the consensus among leaders is that youth sports teams thrive here.
Rick Wilson, president of FALL, who has been with that organization for 26 years, equates the success of Frederick as a youth sports town with the familiarity that comes with longevity.
“This is a baseball town,” Wilson says. He recalls his time playing youth baseball, where he always conflated the city with the sport. “It’s kind of fun when you’re playing…and random people will walk by or stop by to see [and say], ‘Oh, I used to play here!’ It’s that community involvement.”
For newer teams, youth interest could be coming from the community’s efforts to be inclusive, says Kierstan Bailey, president of MARS Jr. Derby, a Hagerstown-based team founded in 2017 that serves the Frederick area.
“I think that this area is very inclusive,” observes Bailey, who has seen the area’s LGBTQIA activists and welcoming values draw participants into what is a very accepting sport. “I think that’s helped roller derby and junior roller derby kind of thrive [in Frederick].”
Longstanding, inclusive communities are ideal for children and their families looking to get involved with sports, and the offerings in Frederick run the gamut. All, however, stress the importance of what youth sports should provide: positive, character-building, relationship-forming experiences.
For Wilson, and FALL’s baseball and softball teams, the reason the organization has lasted for so long goes back to an underlying mantra: “It’s gotta be about the kids,” Wilson says.
Rather than put the focus and intention behind the sport on competition, Frederick teams put healthy experiences for kids at the forefront.
“We just try to keep it positive, give them a learning experience…It’s just about kids having fun and growing to be productive people, versus focusing on ‘win at all costs’—there will be a time for that,” Wilson says.
A league centered around this idea allows children to learn to deal with people: their peers, their coaches, different personalities and methods of teaching.
“It’s really rewarding to watch the kids grow and develop,” Wilson adds, recalling a child who had never played before going almost the entire year without hitting a ball. At the end of the season, in a tournament game, “It was like the lightbulb clicked and he had a couple of base hits, and one was a double that knocked in some runs. When he got the second base and he looked [at me] with a smile going from one ear to the other, it’s like, ‘OK, now I’m back for another year’—that’s what you live for!”
Wilson’s now seen former players return to the league with their kids—part of a strong community cycle.
Bailey agrees that positive values and a strong sense of community in roller derby are one reason that sport has been so successful in Frederick.
“Derby is a very ‘come as you are’ environment,” without cliques or pressures of other mainstream sports. “[It’s] a really big, giant family of people who love derby.”
Once prospective participants begin moving through the three levels of play offered (taking children at a manageable pace from learning to skate to full contact), Bailey sees children transform. “We’ve seen kids that come in that are introverted and don’t talk to anyone—they find themselves, they find people they connect with and then they come out of their bubble,” she says.
Like Wilson’s baseball league, the junior derby team “teaches [kids] about teamwork. It teaches the importance of being resilient,” Bailey says.
All walks of life and identities find a home on Bailey’s teams—from LGBTQIA youth to youth of color. Uniquely, junior athletes choose “derby names” for their gameplay. “They get to be this other part of themselves, which I think really helps them open up and grow as people,” she says.
“A lot of these kids, I’ve known them since 2017….watching these kids grow up and learn and become good human beings has been super rewarding,” she adds.
Learn what kinds of camps your child might enjoy here.
