Southern Kentucky Youth Sports is a new organization dedicated to enhancing fundamentals in three sports, but are looking to add more in the future.

SKY Sports has been brought to life by several residents of Clinton County and it has been developed as a hopeful answer to losing the 21st Century grant this year.

“Me and Mike Davis kind of thought of the idea,” Kelly Harmon, President of SKY Sports, said.

SKY Sports is going to operate as a 501c3, non-profit, organization.

The organization has elected a board of directors and officers to run the program.

“The only thing we’ve done so far is start a Facebook account about a week ago,” Harmon said. “We put our donation letter on there, the one we are going to give to businesses, as just a kind of opening introduction letter. Since 21st Century has gone away, there is no youth sports at all except for baseball.”

Harmon said this organization wants to fill the gap left behind by 21st Century.

As of right now, SKY Sports will be including football, basketball and soccer.

Also in the works is cheerleading. Harmon said he was approached with the idea to add cheerleading to the list of activities for the first year and he thinks it’s a great idea.

“We told some people to come to our next board meeting and we will discuss the idea,” Harmon said. “I think it’s great. There are a lot of girls who don’t want to play sports, but wanted to cheerlead. It will be a good opportunity to get some younger girls into the program.”

In future years, Harmon expects to add to the already existing three-sport lineup, but as of this first year, he believes this will be enough for now.

“I’ve had people ask me if we were going to do volleyball. Eventually we would like to add on to the program, but I feel like it will be too overwhelming to try and do everything right now,” Harmon said. “All the principals have allowed us to put up sign-up sheets at all the orientations for pre-school all the way up to middle school.”

SKY Sports plans on having leagues for ages four years old to around 12 years old.

“All we can do right now is go with what 21st Century had and I think we will end up with more than what they had,” Harmon said. “They had around 440 kids in the program. I’m expecting at least that and more. Soccer is really big here.”

As of right now, SKY Sports officers include president Harmon, as well as Mike Davis vice-president. Melissa Nelson is the treasurer and Gina Poore is the secretary.

On the board of directors is Paula Little, Tim Armstrong, David McIver, Rocky and Charlotte Tallent, Jack Nelson, Adam Davidson and Jaime McCutchen.

Harmon said right now they are trying to raise money. The organization needs around $5,000 for insurance for the entire year. In total, the organization needs around $8,000 total for the first year.

“Once we start football and get receipts in for registration, it will be a fully self-sustaining league,” Harmon said. “My goal is to spend as much as we can on the kids. I don’t want to have two or three thousand dollars in the account. We want to put it back into the program and the kids to make sure we have a good program.”

Harmon said he had a lot of positive responses about people wanting to help out with the program.

In order to raise money for the program, Harmon said SKY Sports is going to do a couple of fund-raisers to get them started.

One of those fund-raisers is a car wash on August 3, at Advanced Auto.

“We have to meet a couple more times on this, but we would like to do a community bash at the park or something,” Harmon said. “We could have inflatables, home run derby, dodge ball and just a whole day of stuff like that. Our plan is to do that maybe around the time school starts or something.”

The football part of the program will be handled a little differently than basketball and soccer.

According to Harmon, the football program is in a conference with other teams outside of Clinton County.

“With football, as long as we have a team or two, there will always be someone they can play,” Harmon said.

Harmon said basketball and soccer will be only played in Clinton County as he expects more children will sign up in those sports to make up more teams.

“That’s why we want people from Pickett County, Tennessee and Cumberland County,” Harmon said. “We think it will allow us to have more teams so the kids aren’t playing the same couple of teams all the time.”

Harmon said there is a lot to do with this program in the initial stages and the board has tried to meet every week since May.

“It’s a lot to do right now,” Harmon said. “We are all just excited to get it going.”

Board meetings are held on Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. at Davis Insurance. For more information, contact one of the board members or one of the officers.