North Lake Tahoe Bonanza: It started out simply enough as an open gym to give young soccer players a place to play indoors during the winter months.

Today, the Incline Afterschool Organization (IAO) offers a variety of activities - academics as well as athletics - that benefit more than 300 children ranging from kindergarten through high school on a year-round basis.

Sound like a full-time job for the organizers? If you were to ask Chris Laramore, serving as the Incline Afterschool Organization's Executive Director is no job at all. Call it a labor of love. Laramore simply prefers to call it fun.

"It's been enjoyable getting into all these activities, some of which I'd never known about," Laramore said. "I never knew how much fun mountain biking, or kayaking or snowshoeing could be. I've gotten to learn all these different activities because of this. I get to be an assistant to all these experts. Like the kids, I learn right along with them because my eyes get just as big as theirs."

The program offered a total of 28 activities with 52 volunteer coaches last year, he added.

"There's 300 kids and they don't have to pay anything, except for the swim development team and we have to pay IVGID fees for use of the lanes," said Wayne McClelland, president of IAO and the organization's Web master.

"This is a reflection of the community's involvement. The community cares. If we need somebody to help out with kayaking, somebody stands up and says, 'I'll help.' Several churches around town have given money and volunteer time. All three principals of the schools have been very supportive as far as giving us priority, access to facilities and even involvement of the teachers."

IAO launches the first full week of its 2006-07 calendar on Tuesday. Glancing at the calendar (which can be found on IAO's Web site) Scott Vaughan and Laramore meet with the Incline Middle School Mountain Biking team from 2:30 to 4 p.m., while Sandi King hosts Homework Club at Incline Elementary School from 3:30 to 4:30.

On Wednesday, McClelland coaches soccer from 2:30 to 4 p.m. at Incline Middle School, while Laramore directs soccer and active games at Incline Elementary School, followed by Homework Club with Hans Keller from 5 to 6.

Back in February, more than 500 people attended IAO's inaugural All-Students Talent Show, a two-day event in which 50 students put on 21 talent acts. The second All-Student Talent Show has been scheduled for Nov. 17-18 (two performances will be held each night).

"Our objective is to get kids out and give them a continuous agenda of things to do," McClelland said.

"Our original focus was third through eighth grade and that has been brought up to k-through-12," he went on. "We feel this should cross demographics, it should have all the ethnic groups involved, have all the lower income kids, upper income and middle income involved. The objective is to keep them away from TV and off the streets. We're touching 300 kids now and I think we can get more involved. I think our ultimate goal would be to touch every kid with two or three kinds of activities."

IAO officially became a nonprofit organization in October of 2004, though it had been two years in building toward that status. And it all started with an informal indoor soccer league.

"It all started very gradually," Laramore said. "We realized that the soccer season was so short and the kids needed other things to do. We were very surprised when so many kids showed up for winter indoor soccer. We actually had to break them up into four teams of seven or eight kids each."

That was just the beginning.

"Then we expanded it beyond the athletics," McClelland said. "We added some computer classes, a Web design course and digital music and video course. Now we have an afterschool homework club. The whole objective is to keep kids busy."

A survey revealed that children around the community were spending up to five hours a day watching television, among other things.

"There was a need," Laramore said. "There's a lot of kids here and they're hungry for something to do after school. We thought that five hours of TV was way too much, so we did a survey of kids and found out what activities they wanted to do, then we started asking different parents and teachers if they could help."

As it turned, there was an ample supply of help available.

"The first challenge was finding teachers for the various activities," Laramore said. "To find a hip hop teacher is expensive, but we were fortunate to find one hip hop teacher and two break dance teachers. Kayaking was another one that became a huge success and mountain biking has also been very successful."

Kayaking was just one example of how IAO has been able to introduce children to Lake Tahoe's recreational possibilities.

"We had about 20 kids participate the first year, and of that number, only three had ever been on a boat on Lake Tahoe before taking the class," Laramore said. "It's great to be able to give kids an experience on this beautiful lake that they wouldn't get ordinarily. We had a kayak-a-thon that helped raise funds to buy a couple of kayaks that we gave to the winners of the kayak-a-thon."

This is a job that can be described as a labor of love.

"To me, it's just a great excuse to go out and have fun," Laramore said. "A lot of adults don't know how to build snow forts or how to snowball battle. We get to do all that. It's our responsibility."

Dave Price
Special to the Bonanza