For the second year running, Karl’s Kids has funded a 6 week Summer Soccer Skills program in Wiscasset. The program is the result of a partnership between Wiscasset High School Soccer Coach Chris Cossette, Director of the Wiscasset Community Center Todd Souza, and Karl’s Kids.

Participants in grades 6 through 10 are developing a better understanding of the game and cultivating the skillset to ensure a successful experience in their middle and high school years. The focus is to build upon each player’s skills and field awareness, while developing a team environment for success. Coach Cossette generously volunteers his time to implement this program in Wiscasset.

Thanks to Karl’s Kids, which is run by the Damariscotta-Newcastle Rotary Club, Summer Soccer Skills is offered free of charge to participants. Karl’s Kids goal is to make sure all children under the age of 18 in Lincoln County have the opportunity to be involved in athletics and to pursue an active lifestyle. The organization helps grant the children sports equipment such as soccer balls, cleats, shin guards, and more.

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Karl’s Kids supports the Bike Rodeo at Great Salt Bay School in Damariscotta by purchasing bike helmets and pant protectors, as well as pitching in where needed to help the bus drivers who organize and run the event.

The purpose of the bike rodeo is to teach bike and roadway safety to kids in kindergarten through third grade by providing information, offering a safety check of kids’ bikes and helmets, and having kids ride their bike through various stations to practice skills.

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A young child in Lincoln County has a rare muscle disease which makes it too dangerous for her to be involved in most team sports. It’s important for her to stay physically active all year, but in ways that don’t involve contact or stress on her joints and muscles.

Karl’s Kids was glad to be able to help when the child’s mother approached us with a special request for cross-country skis, so that she and her daughter could ski in the field behind their house.

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Karl’s Kids representatives Mary Berger and Bob Conger deliver this year’s grant to Cynthia Finnemore Simonds (center), Family Holiday Wishes organizer.

Sometimes, a local need and a local resource come together at just the right time, and at that moment the world seems just a bit brighter.

Many residents of Lincoln County are familiar with the pink and blue tags of the Family Holiday Wishes program. Each December, these tags appear in shops, restaurants, businesses and churches all over town. Through the Holiday Wishes program, the community provides gifts for local families with kids: families that are facing tough choices between Christmas shopping and grocery shopping. Many generous folks in our community find great satisfaction in fulfilling some of those Holiday Wishes as a part of their own family traditions.

One of the recurring themes on the children’s wish lists is sports equipment: sleds, footballs and basketballs, baseball gloves and bats, soccer balls, winter outdoor toys and summer yard games, snowshoes, field hockey sticks, bike helmets, scooters, fishing rods… the list goes on. In total, according to Holiday Wishes organizer Cynthia Finnemore Simonds, “the sports equipment to respond to all the Holiday Wishes in our community would fill a large room!”

Again this year, Karl’s Kids has responded to this need by providing a grant to Holiday Wishes to purchase sports equipment for Lincoln County youth. The $2000 grant will be used to acquire sports equipment for individual Wishes that are not fulfilled through the pink and blue tags, and thus will respond to the eager dreams of many young people in our community. In the process, this grant will encourage and support kids to be engaged in healthy and constructive physical activities, including interacting with other kids in the neighborhood and on athletic teams.

Cynthia Simonds navigates a shopping cart full of sports equipment funded by Karl’s Kids.

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