Johnson talks accomplishments, the summer ahead
For one year, middle school and high school students have had a place to spend their free time out of class, socializing with others their age again. Since the re-opening of the Hamilton County Youth Center in June 2022, Paul Johnson has seen the growth of the center and activities available there.
He described the experience of how the center has grown since he sought to reopen the facility started by Merwyn and Betty Davidson years ago.
“It’s great, it really has been,” Johnson said. “We never expected the level of attendance we have. I love to see the center being fully utilized.”
Johnson reported that attendance has only grown since about six months ago, with middle school going from an average of 45 to over 100 for the last three weekends and from 10-15 for high schoolers to 20-25. This has prompted the Youth Center to split the middle school night group.
“We’re going to move eighth graders to high school night, and so it’s going to be sixth and seventh graders on Tuesdays during the summer and eighth through 12th graders on Thursdays during the summer,” he explained.
He noted that community involvement has increased as well.
“I’ve had a lot more people reach out to me, which is good,” Johnson stated. “We’ve had a lot of people reach out with just donations, whether it be video games or food, like they had a party and they’ve got a bunch of leftover chips or something. We’re always happy to take those as long as it’s still sealed in the bags and everything.”
Part of that outreach has been entities that have sponsored pizza purchased from Pizza Hut and Casey’s most nights and Johnson spoke on how he plans to add more food options.
“Eventually we’d like to add more dinner options without us having a full kitchen or having the storage space to keep everything because we can’t make anything,” he said. “We can only heat up preheated food. So there’s that, but we did have a couple of people want to sponsor cereal bar nights... We could do hot dogs.”
Another way the community has been involved is by the National Honor Society, FBLA and SkillsUSA having high schoolers volunteer at the center, something Johnson said has been a big success.
“They’ve honestly been great,” he said. “They’ve saved us a lot of (time) having to seek out adult volunteers. We always had the high schoolers volunteer on the middle school night and we just encourage them to interact.”
Some of that interaction has been surprising. Johnson said that with the video games and other electronic fun at the center, board games have been popular as well among middle school attendees and high school volunteers.
“It was really surprising to me to see how many of the students enjoy playing board games,” he said. “We’ve added a lot of board games since we started and it’s nice seeing them play on high school nights. A lot of students actually bring in their own board games and I watch them play and even participate if I’m able to.”
He also noted that students tend to interact with each other on a social level, such as in the Merwyn and Betty Davidson Zen Room.
“Just a lot of people hanging out and talking to each other and interacting,” he said. “There’s just a lot of social interaction, which I really liked seeing. I felt during COVID a lot of those formative years that young people have to learn those social skills and how to properly interact was kind of lost for some of them. So it’s been really nice seeing all of the social interaction happening between people.”
Another change was that the Hamilton County Youth Center became its own 501 (c)(3) foundation, separate from the Hamilton County Recreation Inc. as of the end of April. Johnson focused on the new opportunities outside of the community to fund the growth of the center that the change provides
“(That) will let us grow because we’re able to reach out to potential state and federal funding,” he said. “Aurora has been more than gracious with all of their donating and we’re still going to count on them for a lot of things. In order for this place to continue to grow, to kind of reach our ultimate vision for it, it’s going to require a lot of funding and I don’t want to burden Aurora with that much.”
Here comes the summer
Looking forward to year two of the revamped center, plans are to expand the summer programs students can attend. Johnson explained that he wanted to bring more opportunities similar to what he experienced in his youth at the center.
“We have our evenings at the Youth Center, but Merwyn would take us, take a group of kids, and we’d go skateboarding in other towns,” he recalled. “He would take us to the movies, we went paintballing, to Costco and Sam’s Club with him. That was really a lot of memories that I had was activities outside of the normal nights of the Youth Center and I really wanted to share that with everyone.”
The Videography Club started Friday, teaching students techniques on shooting and editing videos from commercials to movies. This program was based on input from volunteers with the organization Beyond School Bells providing the course material.
“They gave us money to buy cameras and equipment, then they have a course that you use to teach kids,” he said. “It was fantastic.”
The Videography Club, as well as some other activities, will continue to be offered in the fall as well.
Another program is the archery program being held at the Hamilton County Fairgrounds, which involves teaching students how to handle bows and arrows.
“There’s a lot of hunting that happens around here and I feel like some people will definitely be interested in that aspect of it,” Johnson said. “It’s also just something fun, something different.”
Students will be provided five or six bows to take turns in improving their skills.
Another activity that is coming is the Slime Stem Cares Workshop put together by UNL and 4H extension office with the Youth Center on June 7, 14 and 21.
“It is open to (kids) 8 to 12 years old, which is younger than our standard target audience here being middle school and high school,” he said. “They’re going to be introduced to the underlying basic chemistry of slime including mixtures and solutions, solubility and the difference between the physical and chemical reaction and then they’re going to make their own slime and play with it.”
On June 14 and June 28 at 6 p.m. there will be a Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart tournament with prizes including 3D-printed trophies given to the top three winners and raffles between rounds.
“We’re planning on doing some other things to keep the students entertained if they get knocked out so that everyone stays,” Johnson added. “I don’t want the two winners to go head-to-head with no one watching them.”
For most Sundays during June and July there will be RC car racing at a location about a block north of the center in an empty parking lot. Cars will be provided for official races though students can bring their own to be played between races or after.
“Some RC cars are very fast; we bought not slow ones,” Johnson explained. “Our’s will go up to 30 miles an hour, which is still pretty fast for an RC car. But I have one at my house that will be doing 50 and when an object doing 30 hits one doing 50 parts break.”
Tracks include circle, S curves and eight tracks.
The tennis program will run from June 21-23 and utilizes the pickleball courts with instructors to include tennis pro Yoja.
During A’ROR’N Days on June 24 there will also be the Youth Street Dance on 12th Street in front of the center. Snacks, a DJ and refreshments will be provided, though students can only go inside to use the restroom.
“(We want students to) enjoy, hang out with their friends and then we’ll have some other things that aren’t fully solidified yet,” he stated.
Another summer program is the drone scavenger hunt June 8 and June 22 where students can fly drones around looking for objects and win a prize.
“To be honest (flying them around the square) gets boring after a while,” he said. “You can only look at the same view for so long... So we’re going to be doing a scavenger hunt in the park where I had somebody use a CNC (computer numeral control) machine to cut out different shapes out of boards that I’m going to spray paint bright colors and we’ll stash some more stuff in the park.”
The center has also paired up with the Edgerton Explorit Center for a disc golf tournament on weekdays from July 17 to 28 at Refshauge Park, where students will learn the art of the flick.
“It’s a fun space in Aurora and I’m not sure it gets utilized enough,” he said. “So we’re going to make sure to utilize this more.”
There will also be prizes for first through third place including a disc golf bag.
The other Edgerton activity is Super Science Saturday on Aug. 12 held at the center which will include Youth Center volunteers.
After a year of seeing his vision for the center continue to grow, Johnson said he was proud of the work accomplished so far.
“I am very happy and almost overwhelmed by the attendance,” Johnson said. “It’s really nice to see everyone coming together and everyone playing nice and being able to enjoy and utilize the space for what it was designed for.”