Chuckie Lawrence and Peace in the Community Kickball

“Last year, I looked around my community and thought about all the things we used to do as kids to have fun—and how those things weren’t happening anymore.

Then I thought about kickball.

As a kid, kickball was great because you didn't need a special skill set. You’d be out there playing in the neighborhood and anybody could walk up and join in: girls, guys, kids you knew and kids you didn’t. For adults, there’s a positivity surrounding it: there’s no toughness or bravado. It’s kickball, man! You kick that ball and run to the base. And for 55-year-old guys like me, you don’t have to worry about rolling off the couch to play and breaking a shoulder! It brings back so many good childhood memories: the innocence of it, how much fun it was—and how much fun it could be, even as adults.

I think a lot of times, that’s what a community is missing: positive things to do! So I started talking to a couple of my friends about the idea of hosting a community kickball event. It turns out they were thinking the same thing! I asked them to come on board because I think that in a community, if you’ve got an idea, we should share that idea and make it happen together.

I love my city. I don't like the fact that Saginaw gets such a negative outlook, especially since we’ve produced some of the best of everything, from athletes to singers. So there’s no reason why a community of people like Saginaw can't get together, do something positive, and continue to be positive about the city to give people a different outlook.

Everybody I reached out to thought, ‘Oh, that would be so dope!’ I reached out to our supportive mayor, Brenda Moore, and she said, ‘My, my, my, I think you should go for it!’ I'm tenacious, you know, and once I get my mind set on something, I'm going for it!

So I went for it.

Once the idea for the Peace in the Community Kickball event became public, it spread like wildfire. The day of the tournament, we had eight teams and 3000 people there in Hoyt. 3000 people! And not one incident! We had a ball out there. The love was tremendous. We defeated a lot of preconceived notions and dispeled a lot of the negative narratives about the city. It was beautiful, and we’re doing it again this year.

It’ll be a three-day event this year, but the actual tournament is on Saturday, August 19th. I’d love to have all the teams interested in participating in the kickball tournament to be registered by May 1st. The teams will be limited to 12 players, ages 25 and older, with two alternates.

This year, we’re inviting teams from Bay City, Midland, Flint, and Mount Pleasant to play as well. With an event like this, it was just natural to reach out and invite other communities to join in…and as friends, maybe whoop on them a little bit, too! It’d be absolutely phenomenal to pull all of our cities together. They get to see how great the Saginaw community is while creating something awesome together other cities and states can look at. All of our communities can benefit from the positivity and love that it brings.

And last year’s event did just that: it brought unity of people, all races and all sides of town together. That was the most important goal—for everybody to be there, together, in a unified way.

It was absolute love.”

“After the success of last year’s Peace in the Community Kickball event, it was great to not only be contacted by people who had so much fun playing, but by people who saw the value of the event and said, ‘Hey, let's talk sponsorship.’ We haven't reached our goal for this year yet, and we still need sponsors, but we're trying. It takes money to do something like this and to build it into what it can become, and if we reach our sponsorship goal, it’s gonna make this year’s event bigger and better.

And then after the event, we had beautiful people who said, ‘Hey, let us help you with the next one. We saw you running around like crazy all day, love what you did, what it stood for, and how it turned out, so we're happy to come on board and just help.’ And that meant everything to me. It solidified for me that the event was worth it, people saying, ‘We have got to make sure we do this again.’”

“I’d love to have all the teams interested in participating in the kickball tournament to be registered by May 1st. The teams will be limited to 12 players, ages 25 and older, with two alternates.

We’ll put together some All Star teams to play the teams who want to come into our community from Bay City, Midland, Flint, and Mount Pleasant to play. I spent a tremendous amount of time in my youth coming back and forth to Bay City, so it was just a natural to reach out to Bay City and invite that community to join in, too…and as friends, maybe whoop on them a little bit, too! I just think it'd be, you know, absolutely phenomenal to pull all of our cities together.

They get to see how great the community is here in Saginaw and buy into us, while creating something awesome that other cities and states can look at. We’d love to eventually make this a regional thing because all of our communities can benefit from the positivity and love that it brings.

The kickball tournament this year is a three-day event, August 18th through the 20th, like a ‘Welcome Weekend’. We're going to definitely try to make something happen for that Friday, because we had a lot of people come in from out of town and we want to give people a way to get together the night before the tournament.

That Saturday, we will play the games in Hoyt Park, and then on Sunday, we're going to go back out to the park, and if we can get the funding that we were looking for, we're going to do a prayer and a picnic in the park. We're going to get a couple of the people that are known for their gospel music to do a couple of songs. I have a couple of the pastors from from the from the community to give a quick word and we're just going to fellowship in the park as a way to cap off the weekend with a little praise and a hamburger and a pop or something to continue the whole unity and fellowship together.”

—Chuckie Lawrence

This year’s Peace in the Community Kickball event will be held at Hoyt Park in the City of Saginaw on Saturday, August 19th. There are plans for a social gathering the night before, and a Prayer and a Picnic event with live music the day after.

Chuckie is inviting more teams to participate—including teams from Bay City, Midland, Flint, and Mount Pleasant! Teams are for ages 25 and older and limited to 12 members with 2 alternates.

Interested teams and sponsors can contact Chuckie at charlesglawrence46@yahoo.com. Teams are encouraged by May 1st.