This past week, I spent time on Friday and Saturday at a sports festival in Budapest with the goal of promoting baseball to hundreds of kids who were bused in from all over the country.The festival was called Sportágválasztó, or Sport Selection, and was absolutely fantastic. Dozens of sports, from tennis to handball to boxing to bobsledding, were on display, and the kids were able to try out each and any sport their little hearts desired. I took a couple opportunities to walk around, and tried boxing and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and of course checked out the Zumba women during their routine on stage (by the way, I'd do Zumba in a heartbeat if I didn't think my Man Card would be revoked back in the states).
We had a portable batting cage, a target toss and T-station set up for the kids to try out, and if I had to guess, we probably had 500 kids come through in the time I was there. Some asked if I'd teach them to play catch; some asked for autographs (still checking eBay to see if one makes it up on there); some swung so hard they nearly killed our T; some threw so wildly that people had to scatter. No matter, they all enjoyed trying everything out, and I tell you, there are some kids who could pick up the sport of baseball and run with it ... if only they weren't all aiming to become the country's next great soccer, hand ball or water polo player.
The federation's hope was to increase awareness of the sport at this event, and possibly get a few interested in playing the sport if a club or league exists in the town they live in. They were all given a brochure with the rules of the game and contact information for the federation, and the hope is that some will follow up, and we may have them playing ball or attending camps in the future.
I would love to have been taken out of class to attend something like the Sportágválasztó while I was in elementary school, and you could tell the kids certainly enjoyed every moment of it. I sure did, as evidenced by the ice cream stain on my shirt and the sore shoulder from taking a kick by one of the jiu jitsu instructors might indicate.
Tomorrow, I'm heading to Debrecen, a town a couple hours outside of Budapest, to conduct a couple school clinics and run a practice for the youth team in their town. It would be fantastic if I saw a couple familiar faces from this weekend's festival!