BUCKHANNON – The Stockert Youth & Community Center plans to offer summer camp at full capacity.

Deborah Brockleman Director at Stockert Youth and Community Center said the center is taking applications for its annual summer camp, Camp Buccaneer, now and they currently have about 15 kids coming to SYCC after school a day.

(Camp Buccaneer begins in June, and more information about SYCC’s youth programming is available here.)

“Karate, little ninjas, kickboxing and Zumba are going well, and they’re adding a few more members as folks are getting their vaccines and the drill team is preparing for performances at Strawberry Festival and other summer events,” Brockleman said. “We will be making a few changes to our drill teams’ program in August, as our current coordinator will be leaving, and she will be starting her own group.”

Brockleman said the community playground cleanup conducted in April was a big success.

“The playground cleanup we had on the 17th of April went very well. We had Wesleyan College football players and their coach, a team from Kelley Tierney State Farm, a few SYCC board members, so we had a total 43 volunteers,” Brockelman said. “Everybody did a great job, and it looks really good.”

She also discussed the potential partnership with the Upshur County Board of Education and said they are working on developing tutoring programs.

“We’re trying to come up with some things to get the kids caught up with their remote learning and their schoolwork,” Brockleman said. “We’ve had a couple of tutoring events with some of the teachers and some of our tutors have all gotten together, like one night a week, and we’ve been offering tutoring. We haven’t really had much participation, but we’re still trying, and it’s been a really good collaboration.”

Brockleman said one goal of the collaboration between the BOE and SYCC is to develop programs for high school-age students.

“We’re always trying to reach the older group of students,” she said. “We always seem to get a lot of participation from the younger kids, but once they get to the high school age, they go their own way and they don’t really have a lot of activities that are organized. That’s where the summer volleyball league comes in, and we’re trying to promote it to the middle and high school folks, but we also want to have adults. We want to offer it to the community as well.”

To see SYCC’s program offerings for youth and adults as well as the events calendar, click here or call SYCC at 304-473-0145.