Green Horde Reaching Out to Help Hospitalized Cleveland Kids

The holidays just ended but there is time to give to those who really need it. There are a vast number of children who are in the Cleveland Clinic’s Children’s Ward who were not as fortunate as the rest of us this holiday season. Claddagh and the Green Horde want to help them out, and they need all the help they can get!

On January 18, 2012 items will be collected at Claddagh in Lyndhurst for the team to distribute to the children that Friday.

Whoever comes in on that Wednesday from 5:30pm until closing and brings a toy with them we will give them 15% off their total food bill.

The hospital is looking for a number of items, including:

• For Infant/Toddler: 
  

  This is just one bag of toys ready to be donated to the children at the Cleveland Clinic.

  • Musical toys
  • Light up toys
  • Stacking toys
  • Mobiles (must be plastic, no cloth parts)
  • Activity gyms
  • Glider/Rocking Chairs (all wood, no fabric)
  • Lullaby and soft music tapes and CDs
  • Crib Mirrors
  • Texture balls
  • Shape sorters
  • Rattles/Teethers
  • Bumbo seats

• For Preschool Age Kids:
  • Little Tike and Fisher Price “Little People” (structures, cars, planes, furniture, people and animals)
  • Sound books
  • Play food and dishes
  • Toy musical instruments
  • Wooden Puzzles
  • Pop-up books
  • Light up and Musical Toys
  • Trains (compatible with Brio Tracks)
  • Go Fish
  • Old Maid
  • Memory Games
  • Doctor Play Kits

• For School-Age/Adolescent Kids:
  • Etch-A-Sketches
  • Sports balls/cards
  • Athletic clothing/tickets/memorabilia
  • Advanced arts and crafts kits (latch hook, stitching, bead kits, wood crafts, etc.)
  • Nerf basketballs
  • Lotion/Aromatherapy
  • New fingernail polish

• Electronics:
  • CDs – Popular/current artists
    

    Bags of toys waiting to be distributed to kids at the Cleveland Clinic

  • Portable/personal CD players
  • Small boomboxes (w/ CD and tape players)
  • Portable DVD players
  • DVDs
  • Laptops
  • I Touch or I Pad

• Games:
  • Guess Who
  • Yahtzee
  • Apples to Apples
  • Clue Jr.
  • Uno
  • Puzzles (100 piece and smaller)
  • Boggle
  • Boggle Jr.
  • Connect Four
  • Sorry
  • Scattergories
  • Scattergories, Jr.
  • Scrabble
  • Scrabble Jr.
  • Rack-O
  • Phase 10
  • Skip-bo
  • Monopoly
  • Monopoly, Jr.
  • Hangman
  • Trouble
  • Operation
  • Dice
  • Sudoku books
  • Word search books
  • Crossword books
• Art & Craft Supplies:
• • Coloring books
  • Colored sand
  • Sand Art kits
  • Clothespins
  • Magnetic tape
  • Sun catchers and sun catcher paint
  • Foam art
  • Velvet (fuzzy) posters
  • Sticker scenes
  • Crayons
  • Washable Markers
  • Stickers
  • Beads & elastic string
  • Play-dough
  • Individual craft kits
  • Model kits
  • Bead/jewelry kits
  • Science kits
  • Sketch pads
  • Finger paint paper
  • Pom poms
  • Glue dots
  • Coloring posters
  • Tissue paper
  • Paint brushes (skinny and wide handles)
  • Chalk
  • Notebooks/Journals
  • Scrapbooking supplies
  • Felt
  • Craft Glue
  • Paint-by-number
  • Glitter Glue pens
  • Glue Sticks
  • Feathers
  • Construction paper
  • Tacky (craft) glue
  • Jewelry-making kits
  • Watercolor paints
  • Model Magic- white
  • Pipe cleaners
  • Kids Scissors
  • Ziploc bags (snack, sandwich, quart, gallon)

• Additional items to consider are:(The items below are used for distraction and therapeutic purposes by Child Life Specialists during tests and procedures.)
  • Play medical kits
  • “I Spy” books
  • Touchable Bubbles
  • Bubbles
  • Kaleidoscopes
  • Party blowers
  • Water tubes
  • Pinwheels
  • Glitter Wands
  • Sound & music books
  • Music cds – relaxation
  • Light-up Spinners

• Any small dollar store-type items that would be used to give patients as a reward after procedures, completing sticker charts, etc.:
  • Fun pads
  •  Hair accessories
  •  Note pads
  •  Hot wheels
  •  Stickers
  •  Key chains
  •  Temporary tattoos
  •  Pencils
  •  Rings/bracelets

 

Cleveland As A Rugby Powerhouse: Campus Tackled

When it comes to cities with access universities, Cleveland and its suburbs are at a distinct advantage. Not  only are there a number of universities in the city itself – mainly Cleveland State University and Case Western Reserve University – along with some of the colleges and universities that dot the Eastern suburbs – John Carroll University and Notre Dame College just to name two. These universities are prime pickings for athletes that can help bolster a rugby club and take it from a one-side organization to one that can send squads to multiple venues on a given weekend.

Similarly to high schools, colleges and universities are crawling with athletes. Also like high schools, not everybody is going to be a stud. That star quarterback from a small high school may not get a second glance on a college campus. That star mid-fielder who lettered all four years in high school may have to sit while some phenom exchange student dazzles spectators and embarrasses opponents. This is a harsh truth about college that lands so many high school superstars on the bench for the bulk of their college careers. They go to all the practices – two-a-days, early mornings, late nights, everything – only to be a breathing mannequin or a star water-fetcher when game time comes.

Other times, high school athletes stay of the sporting scene for other reasons. Perhaps they no longer want to deal with the rigors of an intense practice schedule on top of their college courses. They put in all the work from childhood through high school but they just want to have a more relaxed college career.

The case could also be that the college a student chooses just doesn’t have the sport he or she loves.

If athletes do not join sports programs on their college’s campus, they either make an early retirement from the activity they previously dedicated so much time and effort towards or take their talents to the intramural leagues, telling themselves that beating out frat boys for free t-shirts is a suitable replacement for actual glory. Both are sad ends for any legitimate athlete.

The excess of athletes on college campuses can be prime pickings for rugby teams. Athletes, no matter what their sport of choice is, are driven by competition and the urge to stay active. The hardest thing for an athlete to do is retire, to sit still and watch as what they worked so hard to build fades away. It is incumbent upon rugby teams in cities by universities – cities like Cleveland – to ensure that this does not happen.

Considering the number of universities, and therefore antsy athletes, Cleveland has an enormous pool from which to draw when courting these players to become future ruggers. In order to do so, recruiters need to address the issues facing the average athlete coming into college: the inequitable balance between practice time and playing time, rigorous nature of the schedule and the lack of diversity in sports on a college’s campus.

Sweat Equity: The best way to draw a disenfranchised college athlete – or any athlete for that matter – is to reward them for their effort. Even if it is just a half, or even half of a half, playing time is the best way to show a new player her or she is appreciated and to allow them to prove themselves. The key to this is fairness, though. If there are two new players with similar work loads and schedules, and one player attends more practices than the other, the player who attends more practices – based on fairness – should be given the nod when it comes selection time. Even if the one who comes less of the time is a superior athlete, the one that attends more practices should receive more of a look. This is because the one who is at practice more knows the gameplan and his or her teammates better. A rugby club needs to field 15 teammates to every game, not 14 teammates and an athlete. Ensuring fairness and equity into the practice time-game time equation will ensure that this is always the case.

Be Easy… If You Want: As competition between teams in the mainstream sports gets notched up more and more, the lengths players must go to in order to measure up also become more intense. This means more two-a-days in blistering heat, early-morning swims, late-night ice sessions, sacrificing social lives, drastic weight changes on top of other unsavory and unreasonable requirements. When it comes to rugby, especially men’s teams, this is not the case. Most clubs practice twice or three times a week and entrust their players to take extra steps into their own hands. Due to differing work schedules and lifestyles, players often need to arrive late to or leave early from practices – and they are not punished for doing so. This shows rugby’s pliability and flexibility as well as the team’s willingness to work with its players. This is one aspect of a rugby club that truly sets it apart from any other sport.

Adaptation: Most athletes in college have, at best, heard of rugby but have never thought about playing for whatever reason. Their apprehension to starting up the sport is the belief that they might not succeed. Failure is a great deterrent to trying something new. That’s why connections need to be made between rugby and other sports that are more popular. Ex-football players and wrestlers already have a leg up on the tackling aspect of the game, while soccer players would have an advantage in the fields of agility and conditioning. It won’t always be easy to connect rugby to a sport a student has already played, though; but this is the diligence a club and its recruiters must do. Even if it is just that rugby is a sport, a connection must be made in order to instill in the potential player’s mind that they can be successful in their rugby endeavors.

Doing all these are important to recruiting college student to make a men’s rugby club successful and competitive on a number of levels. What’s most important, though is to appeal to the future and where rugby can take its players. As a future-minded person, placing big goals and possibilities in the future and framing them with rugby can be a great vehicle to get a former high school all-star to try on the short shorts, put on some cleats and try a weird English sport where the players pass backwards.Who knows? The next convert could easily become the next Eagle.

A rugby club can only do so much on its own. It’s not much, though. A club needs a community in order to survive.

Next: It Takes A Village…