Boys & Girls Club gives kids a positive place

RONAN — Rain didn’t dampen kids’ spirits as they jovially shot hoops at the Boys & Girls Club in Polson last week.

Hunter Lytton was doing a different kind of shooting inside at the pool table. “I came here lots of times,” said Hunter, who added he has fun at the club.

“I do reading every time. I get lots of points,” he said.

Hunter is one of about 110 kids who are members of the Boys & Girls Club of the Flathead Reservation and Lake County, which has a club in Ronan and another in Polson.

The kids enjoy after-school and summer camaraderie, learning programs and more at the club that strives to provide kids with fun and structure instead of leaving them to their own devices between when they get out of school and their parents get home from work.

In the late 1990s, a group of community members began researching options for how to best serve the youth and decided a Boys & Girls Club was the best option, said John Schnase, the club’s executive director. By 1999, a chartered club was in Ronan, housed in a Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes building for $1 a year. About seven years ago, the club expanded with a unit in Polson, and moved into St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church basement three years ago.

The club exists as a positive place, especially for children from split families or poverty, but for all children, Schnase said.

“All young people, age 6 to 18, and we don’t turn anybody down,” he said.

Board member and volunteer Michal Delgado said there tends to be a misconception that the club is only for children from troubled backgrounds when, in reality, the club serves all children, including ones who are homeschooled. “It’s really here for the whole community,” she said.

“The door’s open, all you have to do is fill out an application,” she added.

The club runs on about $330,000 a year, which is largely comprised of grants and donations, with a skeleton staff to keep the kid/staff ratio at 10:1. Between 90 and 100 kids use the two clubs each day.

Without donations and the tribes’ generous lease, the club wouldn’t exist, Schnase said.

“We wouldn’t be here, definitely,” he said.

For $50 a year, kids enjoy the benefits of club activities, which include field trips, swimming lessons, games, homework help and more.

During the school year, students work on homework each day. They also do community service projects, such as trash pick up along U.S. Highway 93 and read to residents at the Mission View Care Center in Ronan.

Club programs encourage kids to make positive decisions.

“We struggle between being a daycare and a bootcamp,” Schnase said, adding that the club makes sure kids have fun while giving structured programs that lift up club members.

“I want those kids to come through that door and have the best time they’ve had all day,” he said.

Polson club members can participate in an RC club, which teaches them how to use mechanized planes and other gear, said Lee Schnase, Polson’s unit manager.

“Basically it teaches them how to be responsible with stuff like that,” Lee Schnase said.

Kids also participate in a mentoring program that allows them to share any issues they might have in their day-to-day lives outside of the club with a club employee.

“It’s a pretty eye-opening experience to hear some of their stories,” he said.

Club members also go to the North Lake County Public Library on Fridays to participate in the library’s after-school kid program of games and movies, which exposes the kids to the library and its other services, he said.

A gardening program, in partnership with the Montana State University-Lake County Extension Office, teaches the kids how to grow flowers and vegetables and take care of animals, Delgado said.

“It’s learning in different capacities,” she said.

Programs, such as the gardening one, give kids the experience of working with others and teach them that their actions have real-world consequences — things that are often foreign concepts, John Schnase said.

“For some of them, that’s a very first,” he said.

Getting kids to look outside themselves is what the club does, Delgado said.

“That’s our job here,” she said. “To try to do that.”

One area in which the club would like to improve is teen programming, John Schnase said.

“Our door is open to explore any teen group that would like to meet,” he said.

Likewise, the Polson club would like to offer more teen activities, Lee Schnase said.

“A teen program would be huge,” he said.

The club’s purpose and the current state of families create endless possibilities for helping kids.

“We will never see an end to the need that these kids have,” John Schnase said.

However, the Ronan club is facing a major roadblock in its future of serving kids: losing its building.

When U.S. Highway 93 is changed as part of a project to make the roadway safer, it will use the property where the club now sits.

“That is going to challenge all of us,” Delgado said, adding the challenge is also an opportunity to expand the club and its offerings.

To learn more about the club and how to volunteer or donate, visit bgclynx.org, email hope@ronan.net, or call 676-5437 or 883-0521.

For more photos, check out the Boys & Girls Club photo gallery on our website.