Haneef Hill being recorded behind the scenes for the documentary. (Photo provided by Jill)
For Haneef Hill, the founder of Urban Youth Kings and Queens (UYKQ), helping to produce a documentary about the work he’s been doing with his youth athletic organization for years has a major purpose.
“I not only want to focus on the decline of [youth baseball in the city], but I want to be a part of the solution in reviving the game for the Black community,” Hill said. “My role with UYKQ, as it relates to baseball, is creating an opportunity for kids to play and to attract minorities to want to play.”
A 30-minute documentary that carries this theme was filmed from January to October 2024, and will soon be released. It was organized and produced by UYKQ, Brewerytown-based athletic organization Give and Go Athletics, and Kensington-based photography company Immortal Vision Studios.
The project is complete, and producers are currently determining a release date and streaming platform on which it will be available, with a high chance that it will be released on April 11.
“I wanted to explain [our] passion with baseball, so I said let’s just do a documentary on both of our organizations, what we do, and how we’re trying to bring baseball to different parts of the city,” said the co-founder of Give and Go, Caleb Jones. “We wanted to document Philly’s history with baseball, why we love baseball, what the city has neglected, and how we can get more kids playing it.”
A common mission
UYKQ first connected with Give and Go two years ago when its founders, Andre Wright & Caleb Jones, had a vision of growing their baseball program in Brewerytown and sought inspiration to bring the work to life.
“As I wanted to bring baseball back to North Philly, I saw a flyer of [UYKQ], and someone told me I really needed to talk to this guy,” Jones said. “I ended up meeting Haneef, my daughter ended up playing on his softball team, and we got really close.”
As Give and Go is an organization that holds teen mentorship, basketball leagues and clinics, a lunch and recess program, and a summer camp, they were heavily interested in improving their baseball offerings for the youth in their area.
“We had our basketball stuff more in order than our baseball stuff, [and then Hill] said, ‘Look, I’ll help y’all out,” Jones said. “About two years ago, they started helping us get better equipment, get more organized, get in better leagues, he would scrimmage us, he did a lot of real stuff.”
Both organizations realized that they shared a common goal of wanting to offer Black-owned, high-quality baseball and softball programs for kids of color in inner-city neighborhoods and bring back popularity amongst the youth.
“[Give and Go] were able to see what we built and said, ‘We want this down Brewerytown,’ and I told them I’ve been trying to collaborate with people for years,” Hill said.
These offerings and a sense of popularity were something that families and community members quietly noticed a decline in over the years.
Jones said how the growth of their baseball program quickly started to resonate with North Philly communities, saying, “All the older folk would stop, and it would be crazy! People that were like 50 years old and up would sit at the gate and watch us play.”
“I would ask ‘Why is everyone watching?’ and people would tell me, ‘Ain’t nobody really played baseball down here in 30-40 years,” Jones added. “They loved it, and I was like damn… this is big.”
Hill also heard some sentiments that shocked him, saying he’s had “several parents tell me that I’m the first Black Baseball coach that they’ve ever seen.”
“As I talk to a lot of my families, I’m hearing that the reason they want to participate in our program is because they feel alike within the program, and they see players and coaches that resemble them,” Hill said.
Capturing the work
During the winter of 2023, Jones saw the effect their programs were having on families and began to plant the idea of the documentary, emphasizing to Hill and Wright that their story needed to be told.
Just like the work with their organizations, the motivation for the project stems from years of its organizers observing a drop in well-rounded baseball and softball programs for minorities in underrepresented communities.
Hill, who has played baseball as a kid and young adult in leagues across the city, mentioned that he’s seen it firsthand.
“When I grew up playing, I saw more Black kids playing,” Hill said. “It definitely has changed.”
“When I drive around now and when I look on social media, you don’t see it as much. There’s a lot of people who are talking about [baseball] and recognize its impact, but aren’t taking action,” he exclaimed.
Now with this documentary, their focus is to present how their organizations have worked to change this narrative. That includes the impact they believe the game can have on many families and kids across Philadelphia and other inner-city communities.
“We talked about what we wanted to do, and then CJ Wolf [from Immortal Vision] wrote up an outline of what it would look like,” Hill said. “He developed a platform of how he would collect the information and footage throughout 2024 and built a timeline.”
Immortal Vision’s camera crews would attend games and athletic events from UYKQ and Give and Go to get great deals of action footage and interview program leaders and parents along the way.
Alongside these captured experiences throughout 2024, viewers will see and hear sentiments from the UYKQ and Give and Go leaders, as well as compiled clips of experts and journalists speaking on the subject.
“I was blown away to see how these types of things come together,” Hill said. “The kids did good, they worked through it as if [the cameras] weren’t there; I told them we’re putting a short movie together and you might be in it.”
What to expect next
Organizers are planning a release party for the project, most likely on April 11, at the Braid Mill on High Street.
Families, young athletes, and community members will be welcomed to see the final product and hear producers discuss its motivations while bonding over food and drinks.
“This is bigger than me and Germantown; I want to help, and I want to spread what I’m doing,” Hill said.
According to Jones, a flyer for the release and its event will be released soon. To learn more about these organizations and stay updated on the release, visit UYKQ’s social media and Give and Go.