UC Clermont's Baseball Team Spends Time at Children's Hospital in Community Outreach Mission

UC Clermont's baseball team has been spending time at Children’s Hospital in a community outreach effort. Five-six players from the team have visited Children’s Hospital every Tuesday in November and are scheduled to again for the first Wednesday in December. The players spend an hour in the patient activity center, where children come to relax, enjoy some time away from their rooms. In the activity center, the team members played games, talked and interacted with the children. The players also brought UC Clermont t-shirts, Cougar Pride bracelets and little foam UC Clermont baseballs to share with the kids. The players asked patients to sign a banner - making them honorary UC Clermont Baseball teammates.

“The idea of visiting Children's Hospital came about from wanting to give back to the community and to help bring some joy to people who are going through some life struggles. We also wanted to provide a life lesson to the players about how blessed they are for their health, skills and chance to play college athletics,” said Head Baseball Coach Keith Bauman.

“Since our players can relate to children and to how much fun it was growing up playing outdoors, we decided to spend time visiting children in the hospital who were unable to enjoy the outdoors. We are hoping to bring some joy to the children's time in the hospital, letting them know people care about them, creating friendships with the children and making them feel part of a team,” said Coach Bauman.

The banner the children are signing will be displayed at all of the games this season. “We will hang the banner in the dugout for home and away games, so the players can see our honorary teammates. Knowing their new friends are battling an illness, struggling with daily pain and are unable to enjoy being outdoors hopefully, will inspire our players. Our players will learn from their new young friends' bravery to embrace life, to enjoy every minute, take nothing for granted, to be the best they can be at all times,” said Coach Bauman.

For more information about UC Clermont College Baseball, please visit:

http://www.ucclermont.edu/athletics/MensBaseball.html

The UC Clermont Cougars participate in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA). UC Clermont Athletics includes Women's Volleyball, Men's & Women's Soccer, Men’s and Women’s Basketball, Baseball and Softball. The Cougars have been successful - bringing home national championship titles in men’s and women’s basketball and baseball. In addition, the volleyball and softball programs have been ranked nationally and have been highly competitive in national tournament play.