Baseball Continues Team Project at Texas Children's Hospital
9/26/2007 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Sept. 26, 2007
HOUSTON - University of Houston Baseball players recently took a tour of Texas Children's Cancer Center during the beginning stages of the team's continuing project at that facility throughout the 2007-08 season.
Junior pitchers Dereck Cloeren and Ricky Hargrove, senior infielders Bryan Pounds and Ryan Lormand, junior outfielder Jimmy Cesario and senior outfielder Bryan Tully -- were nominated to serve as project team captains. Those captains then drafted the remaining players on their respective teams.
Recently those captains, along with assistant coach Abe Arguello, student manager Nike Sheffer and director of baseball operations Traci Cauley, toured the facility with Dr. ZoAnn Dreyer, medical director of the center's Long-Term Survivor Program.
"It's just good for us to go over there and visit those kids and young adults. They (the players) see that what they have is special," head coach Rayner Noble said. "Hopefully, it shows all of us that we shouldn't feel sorry for ourselves. It simply goes back to caring for other human beings."
The Cougar group also met and visited with several patients at the hospital, including a little boy named Peyton and Victoria Enmon, whose mother taught Cloeren in the seventh and eighth grades at Little Cypress Junior High School in Orange.
For Cloeren, the Cougars' relationships with patients at Texas Children's Cancer Center benefits both groups.
"Most of the kids that we see are there to get their treatments. We might be able to brighten their day," Cloeren said. "They come up to us and want to know about baseball. It's a good experience for them, and it helps takes their mind off the fact why they are there."
However, the patients in the Center give the Cougar players a broader perspective in life as well as good company.
"At the same time for us, you think that you have problems sometimes with a test to study for and baseball. But when you walk in there, all of that just leaves. You see that it's not that big of a deal," Cloeren said. "You learn life lessons as you go. Those kids make you smile."
After returning to UH, the project captains will instruct their team members about the hospital's rules and regulations, policies and general layout.
The Cougars will regularly send one team a week to meet with the children throughout the 2007-08 season. There, the Cougars will read to the children, draw with crayons, dabble in arts and crafts projects, answer questions and simply interact with the patients.
The Cougars open their 2007 season on Feb. 22-24 when they play host to Pacific in a three-game non-conference series at Cougar Field. That series begins at 6:30 p.m., Feb. 22, continues at 3 p.m., Feb. 23 and wraps up at 1 p.m., Feb. 24.
