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Sports

PAL Provides Safe Avenues for Athletic, Social Development

Since 1949, the New Providence Police Athletic League has allowed children to learn and develop through sports

In a small town where athletic effort is boundless but wins might be scarce, each modicum of positivity really becomes substantial.

Every smile, every high five and every pat on the back becomes extraordinary. 

Take, for example, one of Al Iannacone’s earliest memories coaching with the New Providence Police Athletic League (PAL) 11 years ago.

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Iannacone’s baseball bunch had just won one of its first games, and as he watched the boys carouse about in celebration, he had something of a point of validation that this was priceless for everyone involved.

“In a lot of sports, you try hard, but you don’t always see success,” Iannacone, 47, said. “When it finally comes through, and you see them break through, and they get a couple of wins, they get all excited, they pat their friends on the back, and they all feel that success; that really makes it all worthwhile."

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Iannacone, who has been the president of the New Providence PAL since January, points to that seminal moment as just one of the countless positives that the PAL brings to children.

The New Providence PAL, which was formed in 1949, provides children ages five to 18 with the opportunity to play a number of sports, including baseball, softball, basketball, football, wrestling and cheerleading.

An emphasis is placed on learning and developing the fundamentals, both in sports and in life.

“We really try to promote good health, sportsmanship, fair play; really, it’s just a way for kids to have a good social interaction, and I just find you learn to be a team player,” Iannacone said. “Life’s all about being part of a team, no matter where you go.”

Baseball and softball are currently in season, while football and cheerleading run in the fall, with basketball and wrestling taking place in the winter.

Mike Felezzola, the New Providence PAL baseball commissioner, said the league’s organized competition allows children to better their skills, but the fact that they have a “no player left behind” policy ensures that every child will be able to play the sport they want to play.

“Every kid that wants to play travel baseball in New Providence gets on a team someway, somehow,” Felezzola, 44, said.

This is possible because of the Green League, a summer baseball league sponsored by the New Providence PAL.

“What started at least 12 years ago, maybe a little longer, with six or eight teams, is now around 150 teams, so [it includes] pretty much any town you can think of,” Felezzola said.

“That was what gave a lot of these kids an opportunity to play summer baseball who might have not been able to. Traditionally, the Little Leagues have their all-star game, and that’s it. So, if a kid wanted to play baseball and didn’t make his Little League team, his baseball opportunities may be done,” he said.

Felezzola is just one of many volunteers who help to drive the New Providence PAL.

Darren Marcantuone, the fundraising and public relations director, said the New Providence PAL runs on the league fees each child is required to pay, and through the volunteer work of members of the community, who help out with coaching, fundraising, food concessions, and event coordinating.

Iannacone said he looked forward to helping out with his own children’s athletic undertakings from the time his first son was born.

“You want to be that dad, you want to be the guy that’s there with the kids, and try to do the right thing for them,” Iannacone said.

Of course, while the recreational and learning aspects of the PAL are what brings the kids out, a critical element that PAL board members want coaches and parents to keep in mind is the safety of all participants.

The New Providence PAL requires all of its coaches to attend a clinic known as the Rutgers S.A.F.E.T.Y. (Sports Awareness for Educating Today’s Youth) Clinic, which is designed by the Youth Sports Research Council (YSRC).

The clinic runs in accordance with the “Little League Law,” which New Jersey state legislators passed in 1986.  The law protects volunteer athletic coaches, umpires and officials from lawsuits by extending partial civil immunity to those who have attended a safety course and training program.

The clinic also began in 1986, with the objective of helping coaches minimize the injury risk to young athletes and of providing information about fundamental coaching concepts.

The director of the YSRC, Gregg Heinzmann, who has been with the YSRC since 1987, said one of the most important things for coaches to take away from the Rutgers clinic is that the reasons why children play sports vary dramatically from the reasons why adults play them.

“The implication is that [coaches] have to design their practices and their programs around the developmental needs of children,” Heinzmann said. "Coaches need to realize that children are not miniature adults. But sometimes when you dress them up in uniform, and call them Mets or Yankees or Dodgers or Knicks or Rangers, and we make the game look so much like what we watch on TV, it’s easy to lose sight of that fact.”

“Professional sports is entertainment, it’s business, and youth sports is about child development, fun, socialization, development of skills and getting exercise,” he said.

Aside from the clinic, Iannacone said the New Providence PAL board of directors goes through other processes to ensure child safety, such as putting the children in the best equipment it can find.

“We have our football helmets reconditioned every single year,” he said. “Whatever the prescribed cycle life of a helmet is, we’re always going out and getting new helmets at an earlier time period. A lot of times, the manufacturer will tell you, ‘this helmet will last about seven years,’ and we certainly don’t let it go that long.”

In addition, with more and more information coming out about the effects of concussions on the brain, Iannacone said the PAL would be better prepared to handle an injury that he thinks has been difficult to diagnose, even for trained medical professionals, in the past.

While safety on the field is widely emphasized, Ronald Allen, secretary of the National PAL board of directors and executive director of the PAL in Westfield, said the program also helps to promote safety off the field by strengthening a community’s relationship with its police department.

“[When] everybody looks at the cops when they come in and are arresting people, then they look at them from a negative standpoint,” Allen, 50, said. “But when those officers are out there providing programs and working side-by-side with the parents and the kids, then it adds a whole different flavor to the community.”

“When you have that connection of the youth and the parents connected on a positive level with police officers, it allows for, if there is an issue in that particular town, officers to be able to talk to them on a different level rather than talking from a legal aspect,” he said.

While the New Providence PAL continues to move towards the future, and new generations of kids enter the league, Iannacone continues to look to his past as a guide on what is most important.

"It’s fun to see the kids have success when they win, but none of us are out there saying, ‘we want to bring championships back to the PAL,’” Iannacone said. “We want to keep the kids healthy, we want to keep the kids in the programs, we want to see them have fun. The only way they’re ever going to get good at these sports is to just have fun doing it."

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