When we arrived in late July at the Dayspring Community Center to drop off a Gaga Pit that BYSC was donating, we were met with some raised eyebrows from the staff. “What kind of pit is this again?” they asked. Danny assured them they would soon know what Gaga was and that they would grow to love it.
The Dayspring Community Center, housed in what was formerly the Good Shepherd Presbytarian Church in Yorkers, is part of a newly built complex that also includes a 62-unit affordable housing complex. It’s all the brainchild of Richard Nightingale, the president and CEO of Westhab, who spearheaded the project.”This is a place worth investing in,” he told us. “We’ve served this community for 20 years. We just never had a central place to do it.”
Backyard Sports Cares has been working with Westhab for almost half of those 20 years. In fact, we used to run programming in the old church before it underwent the renovation that has transformed it into a hub for kids’ activities, classes for adults and a gathering place for the whole community.
BYSC summer coaches Micah Arenstein and Kenneth Aldridge were the lucky two who got to enjoy the new space this summer running programs. They also introduced the kids to Gaga and just as Danny promised, the kids took to it right away. In fact, what started out as a soccer program morphed into a Gaga program for the final few weeks of the summer.
