About a year and a half ago, Pampa resident Talyn Pointer started the Pampa Ducks-a youth-based traveling sports team comprised of boys from kindergarten through sixth grade who share a common passion: a love of the game.
Differing from the Optimist Club and the YMCA, the Pampa Ducks teams travel around the Panhandle playing against other traveling sports teams, not only giving these young players a different experience, but different scenery as well.
With a traveling sports team, it prepares the youth for what lies ahead if they decide to partake in sports once they enter Junior High and High School, playing against different teams that may be far from home and maintaining the commradery with their own team and respect for the opposing team no matter where they go.
Head Coach Talyn Pointer, along with Assistant Coach Gavin Smith, have given the youth of Pampa an opportunity to do just that.
“I wanted to offer an opportunity for parents and kids that wanted to seek a higher level of competition and get our Pampa youth exposed to a higher level of competition and traveling,” Pointer said.
“I noticed that Pampa really didn’t have a youth travel program. I mean, I had noticed that they had the Optimist Club and a local YMCA for the kids, but not an actual traveling sports team.”
Pointer is no stranger to competitive sports and has coached youth sports for nearly nine years, three of those years here in Pampa, coaching basketball as well as football for different organizations and decided to start his own.
“And so when I started the Ducks, it was just a small group of kids that I had known and their parents from coaching in those organizations, and they trusted me to bring their kids over. And then word of mouth kind of got spread around and we ended up starting to get more and more kids.”
The Pampa Ducks is currently a basketball team, but Pointer plans to expand the Ducks to more than just one sport, as well as expanding the age groups and potentially adding a girls team.
“Maybe in the near future, we’re looking at doing some Junior High and High School travel teams as well for the summer. We also are in contact right now with a youth program out of Borger, so that way during the fall we can offer football through our program. And also we’ve also looked into adding summer track as well.”
But with big ideas about expansion, Pointer and Smith are in need of coaches and volunteers to reach that point.
“Right now, there’s only two of us running the program and we are wanting to add more people to coach or volunteer. As of right now, it’s just something that’s still so new, we’re still trying to kind of get our foot in the door and our roots set here in Pampa,” Pointer said.
When inquired about the team name and organization, Pointer certainly made a good point.
“There was already a lot of the Little Harvesters and Harvester teams and stuff like that. For me, I’ve never played on a Harvester team, but I played quite a bit of travel ball. I played college basketball for a year and a half. But I really have never played on a team where the travel team had the same name as the High School or the Junior High. And so I thought, what team could we go with where the colors and everything would coordinate with the Harvesters, school colors and the town’s colors? And so we decided to go with the Ducks.”
The teams’ uniforms liken to an official school’s sports uniform, with its own special and unique logo that sticks true to the team’s name; all paid for out-of-pocket by Pointer himself.
The Pampa Ducks organization is completely non-profit and rely on registration fees and fundraisers held throughout the year.
“We try to do some kind of fundraiser, whether it be football squares, a gun raffle or the calendar fundraiser. We’ve tried to do some type of fundraiser so that we could raise enough money to cover our travel expenses in our tournament fees,” Pointer said, expressing his desire to expand the traveling from small, local towns to bigger areas such as Lubbock and Amarillo.
Although the Ducks are still relatively new, they have played (and won) their fair share of games, the most recent being in Lefors and Shamrock with more games booked for the season that include Miami, Wheeler, and Fort Elliot where they will be broadcasted on the Pampa Ducks Facebook page.
A few of the team members have also been recognized for their hard work:
#10 Damir Molina, #23 Triston Goldsmith, #24 Anthony Ramirez, #9 Rustin Newman, and #2 Kyle Johnson were named to the Panhandle Competitive Sports Association All-Star Team in Perryton.
So far this season, the team consists of 5th and 6th graders with sign-ups and registration for 1st and 2nd graders now open. Sign-ups for 3rd and 4th grade boys will come after the baseball season has ended.
Pointer expresses his gratitude to everyone in the Pampa community that have supported the Ducks and has contributed to their startup and success.
“Honestly, I mean, really I’ve been blessed with an amazing group of parents. When I first started this program, I didn’t expect it to kind of have the success that it’s had. And that’s all due to the great people that we have in the Pampa community and the great group of parents that I have. With their support, we’ve been able to actually have this go on for nearly two years and hopefully we can keep it going for a lot longer for these kiddos.”
For more information about the Pampa Ducks and how to volunteer, become a coach, or for sign-ups, visit the Pampa Ducks Facebook page.
