Tuesday In The Park With Sportsometry

The Hill’s Trowbridge Square Park has been filled this week with aspiring artists, mathematicians, and athletes.

A dozen kids from the nieighborhood and beyond joined a free summer camp run by a youth program called Sportsometry.

Tuesday was a day of painting, golfing, and pizza. And math:The campers learned to read bar and pie charts to learn the number of dribbles, chest passes, and shots they had to make on the basketball court.

Sportsometry is looking to offer the free camp annually for two-to-four week each summer in more neighborhoods.

Following math on the basketball court the group returned to the park, the center of a mini-neighborhood (Trowbridge Square) tucked between Church Street South and Howard Avenue, for a relaxing paint session. On cardboard canvases the students decided what color house that surrounded the park to paint. Most were inspired by a orange and blue house across from the park while some others instead painted whatever came to mind.

Sisters Samaiyaa and Saniy used a pallet made up of red, yellow, and white. As Saniy dabbed her brush in the blob of red paint, her younger sister followed. They then mixed the red with the blob of white to make pink. They repeated the process with the red and yellow paint to make orange.

As the duo got painting, 5‑year-old Samaiyaa (pictured above) leaned over to her sister and told her that she messed up her canvas with a wrong stroke.

Her older sister reassured her to keep going.

“Your picture still looks good Samaiyaa, that’s why I call you the artist,” Saniy said. ​“She’s going to be an artist and I’m going to be a doctor.”

“That’s how Picasso started, by messing up,” Eden added.

For their final products, Samaiyaa painted a pink house with a red race car. Saniy painted a house with 15 floors and a pink and red fence. She agreed to have the camp come to the home for a party and to live there.

After a half hour of painting, instructor Angelique Smith, 24, led the campers in a show and tell of their master pieces.

Josiah (pictured), 5, showed how he made a new color out of shades of reds and yellows.

Others painted pictures of rollercoasters, oceans, birds, and snow.

Smith, who lives in Newhallville and is known by the students as ​“Ms. Angie,” has been a Sportsometry instructor for the past three years. She began as a student at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) and is now a special education teacher.

“A lot of these kids are just meeting for the first time, so this gives them the opportunity to prepare for back to school,” Smith said.

Connor Sharnick is Sportsometry’s lead Instructor and a basketball coach at Masuk High School. Sharnick joined Sportsometry seven years ago with a interest in sports and the goal to become a high school math teacher.

After painting Sharnick led the campers in a game of golf. Then the group had lunch.

To finish up the day Eden led the students in a closing meditation. The campers closed their eyes for three timed periods then shared about what they heard while sitting quietly with their eyes closed. Sounds ranged from cars, people talking, and jack hammers to the wind, drills, birds, and trains.

“When you’re at home try this. No matter your mood just push yourself to relax and steady your breathing,” Eden said.

Sportsometry, founded by Annick Winokur, provides enrichment programming for youth after school as well as in the summer through a math, science, and athletics based curriculum, founded by Annick Winokur.

This summer Executive Director Elvert Eden piloted a free two-week neighborhood-based summer enrichment program for youth in Dixwell and the Hill. Last week Sportsometry set up base at Dixwell’s Scantlebury Park for 50 youth with a week of outdoor fun and learning. This week the team set up base at Trowbridge Square Park through Friday.

Friday’s final day is scheduled to include a pop-up Griffin Hospital vaccination clinic for all Hill neighbors to get protected from Covid-19.