Bringing the Draft to Balduck Park

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More than 500 kids brought their game faces to the recently restored Balduck Park on Saturday for a massive free football camp in eastside Detroit.
Hosted by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) and its community partners, Saturday was all about “bringing the draft to Balduck Park.” Later this week, Detroit hosts the draft - annually one of the most anticipated dates on the NFL calendar - for the first time in city history.
“We’ve been working on this day for a year and a half,” said BCBSM Vice President and Special Assistant to the President for Community Relations, Ken Hayward. “When it was announced that the draft was coming to Detroit, we knew the neighborhood wouldn’t have easy access to the draft, so we wanted to bring the experience to them, at Balduck.”
The NFL draft will take over downtown Detroit between April 25-27 across Campus Martius Park and Hart Plaza. Football fans from all over the country will fly in to attend not only the live event, but the many ancillary festivities the city has planned. Not everyone from Detroit will be able to attend, making Saturday’s camp a special draft-adjacent event that transferred some of the buzz and electricity over to Detroit’s east side.
“The draft is expensive, it costs an arm and a leg to get downtown, and the families we serve here in this neighborhood, they’re probably not going to have the chance to go downtown,” Schwarze said. “So, to bring it here to Balduck and give the kids a chance to meet some former Lions players and do some drills I think is a really cool thing and a great way to bless some families.”
BCBSM adopted the Balduck Park neighborhood through the Strategic Neighborhood Fund (SNF) in 2019. The Balduck Park project resulted in $1.5 million in improvements courtesy of SNF funding and President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Act. The park’s infrastructure has been enhanced with brand new walkways, planted trees, new landscaping and a picnic shelter and dog park. The playground was also expanded, and crucial infrastructure improvements were made to address chronic flooding issues. These upgrades made fun-filled, community-building days like Saturday possible.
“Today totally fits our mission of getting kids out, being healthy, getting them not only to exercise but learn great habits about teamwork and discipline that they will hopefully keep with them for the rest of their lives,” Hayward said. “We’ve embraced this community, and we were really excited about bringing the draft to Balduck.”
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, a nonprofit mutual insurance company, is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. BCBSM provides and administers health benefits to more than 4.4 million members residing in Michigan in addition to employees of Michigan-headquartered companies who reside outside the state.
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