CYAA seeks new board members

The Cambria Youth Athletic Association is calling on parents of Cambria kids from kindergarten through eighth grade to join the CYAA board and infuse some new energy into this nonprofit community organization.

In recent years there has been “a decrease in kid participation in sports in this town,” said Gary Stephenson, who has been CYAA president for seven years. “Our Coach-Pitch and T-Ball participation is down from between 40 and 50 kids a few years ago to about 25 now.”

Not enough kids signed up for basketball — normally a popular sport in Cambria — this past fall, so CYAA replaced it with indoor soccer.

“We want more opportunities than soccer for our kids,” Stephenson said.

Too few kids have signed up for flag football over the past three years, so that program had to be canceled each of those seasons.

Having parents of younger kids involved in CYAA, they in turn will be “more connected with other parents of young kids,” Stephenson said.

“We don’t want CYAA go away,” he added, because it offers “a great outlet for the kids … and it creates athletes that succeed both in sports and in life as they get older.”

Misty Tartaglia, a current board member, said the possibility that CYAA could be “dissolved” has been discussed due to “lack of interest.”

“We need young parents that would be a good influence on these little athletes and are eager to keep this going.”

Meetings are held every three months, and they only last an hour, Tartaglia explained. And for a parent who joins the board, their kids play all CYAA sports free of fees.

This story was originally published February 10, 2016 at 9:28 AM with the headline "CYAA seeks new board members."