The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

STEPHEN ‘Bishop’ Beneby pulled his rookie Proper Care Young Stars from the New Providence Softball Association because of a dispute with the league executives. Instead, he hopes that he can build on the various girls’ softball programme that he has developed at the Junior Baseball League of Nassau.

For the past three years, Beneby and his assistants have been working arduously with the young ladies with the view of preparing them to compete in the JBLN and in international tournaments with the purpose of securing athletic scholarships to high schools and colleges in the United States.

“We are just fresh off the trip to Washington for the Pony Nationals and we have about 10-12 girls who are going off to school,” Beneby said. “We are now getting our programme ready for next year. We have practice every Tuesday and Thursday from 4-7 pm and on Saturday from 10-12.

“We are inviting any girls interested between the ages of eight and 18 to come out. We are especially interested in those that are between the ages of 8-11 because we will be running a clinic every day at practice for those who are just getting started. We need to start earlier and the girls have to have a better knowledge of the game.”

During the tournament, Beneby said they played against players who would have played about 60-70 games a year. The local girls, according to Beneby, don’t play that many games in 10 years. While the team didn’t win any games, Beneby said they caught the attention of the coaches.

“We know one of the deficiencies is that we need to play more games,” he said. “We spoke with the president of the Eleuthera Softball Association and the president of the Andros Softball Association, who are both interested in us bringing our programme to their islands. So what we will be doing is inviting some of these girls to go to the various islands with us to help bring those programmes on stream.”

Already, there are a number of coaches who have expressed an interest in coming to the Bahamas to put on clinics and they intend to bring their teams to compete in a tournament that is tentatively set for June, 2015 for players in the under-16 and under-14 age groups.

“We have about 10 teams who want to come to that tournament,” Beneby said. “So we just have to meet with some corporate sponsors and try to get that off the ground. The girls need to play more softball. But we are doing tremendously well with the short time that we have been in existence. We started with about 70 girls and we are now around 150. So we’re moving and there’s a lot of the upside to what we are doing with the JBLN programme. We have about 20 coaches in the programme, but we want to bring in more coaches and we intend to put on a coaches’ clinic. We are also looking for persons who wish to come out and official. They can always contact me for more details.”

Last year, Shane Albury got involved in the programme as a coach after his daughter Sari Albury joined a year ago.

“It’s an excellent programme,” he said. “This is my first year, but from what I’ve seen so far, especially coming from the tournament, coaches have told us how they are impressed with our level of play. They’ve seen the improvement from a year ago to now, so I’m very impressed with the young ladies, especially those who have received scholarships to go to high schools and colleges.

“As we continue to play and improve, we know that the door is open for the young ladies to get scholarships to play, something that they would not have been able to do if they were not in the programme.”

Kevin and Opal Ferguson are the parents of Kevique Ferguson, who is heading off to high school this year. “I think they have given the girls a lot of expsoure,” Opal Ferguson said. “This keeps them focused as teenagers and it helps them a lot. They have gained a lot of experience.”

Through the programme, Kevin Ferguson said his daughter “has become more responsible and she takes the sport a lot more serious than she did before. Right now, she’s more focused on doing what she needs to do. Before, when she got into the sport, she sort of slackened off. But she’s now totally focused.”

Neither parent anticipated that they would have seen their daughter go off to school right now. “It came as a surprise,” Opal Ferguson said.

Added Kevin Ferguson: “I’m really happy and I really want to thank Bishop and his wife Sherry and his team because they put a lot of sacrifice to push the girls to do better and be more focused.”

The Fergusons encouraged the young girls now in the programme and those wishing to join to come out and learn as much as they can.

“This was like a secret out here. I didn’t know about it and my wife didn’t know about it,” Kevin Ferguson said. “But when we came here and we saw what was going on, we were really impressed. Once you come here, you will definitely get something out of this.”

Shop Smart has come on board as a sponsor and Atalia Cash, representing the company, said they have been pleased with the way their money was spent.

“We believe in investing in the youth of our nation and we believe in developing the talents of our young people,” she said.

“We are here to assist them in their goals and I noticed that a lot of them are going off to high schools and colleges on scholarships, so we think the association is doing an excellent job and so we are here to support them.”

Cash said they also sponsor the Shop Smart Mets, a team in the younger girls’ age group division and they are looking forward to providing more assistance to the programme in the future.

Beneby noted that he was just too frustrated with all of the rules that were implemented against his Proper Care Young Stars during the first half of the NPSA season and so they decided to pull out.

He said he will now concentrate on developing the young talent that they have to work with in the JBLN Softball League.