Children's glee back with Travs

There are few occasions on which it's acceptable to consume slushies and funnel cakes at 10:30 a.m. while washing them down with a Coke or Powerade.

If their parents were around to tell them otherwise, maybe some of the 1,500 or so children who packed into Dickey-Stephens Park on Tuesday morning might've had to opt for a healthier alternative.

Perhaps a hot dog and bottle of water?

Alas, adults were few and far between when "School Day" returned to North Little Rock for the first time in more than two years. Students from 18 schools scattered around the ballpark for the Arkansas Travelers' series opener with the Springfield Cardinals, a 9-2 victory for the Travs highlighted by a six-run sixth inning in which 12 players batted.

Entering the day, the Travs had totaled just three multihit games by a single player during their first five contests. Against the Cards, four different Travs logged at least two hits -- and that didn't include the day's lone home-run hitter, Stephen Wrenn, who lifted a solo shot to right to ignite the sixth.

"To be a good team, you have to have that timely hitting," said Travs shortstop Jordan Cowan, who finished the day 2 for 4 with a run, RBI and walk. "Today was a really good job of that. We put together a lot of quality at-bats ... and as long as you keep putting together good at-bats over the course of the season, a lot of games are going to turn into wins for us."

For many in attendance, the game's outcome mattered much less than the outing itself.

Tuesday marked the first field trip since the middle of the previous academic year for the heavy majority of the children. In the year-plus since, teachers, students and parents have been put through the wringer that is school during a pandemic -- a mixture of remote and in-person learning, interspersed with constant cleaning and mask-wearing.

Some teachers like Mayflower's Theresa Chambliss have missed simple things such as their students' smiling faces.

"You lose the personal interaction with the kids," She said. "Just being with groups and going on field trips, we haven't been able to do that. You sometimes can't even recognize the kids with their masks."

Mayflower had one of the largest crews Tuesday, with close to 300 children from their middle school ranging between fifth and eighth grades.

Their fifth- and sixth-graders, seated just below the concourse and directly behind the Travs' dugout, happily banged along with their thundersticks as the organist played your standard fare of ballpark tunes.

Some teachers had to make sure their students weren't knocking one another on the head with the inflatable noisemakers. Coaches on the field occasionally had to scoop up a loose one that drifted onto the field on a cool, breezy, overcast day.

There were few complaints as the boisterous young crowd cheered loudly and incessantly, clamoring for anything they could get their hands on -- be it a foul ball or a simple hacky-sack giveaway.

"We didn't know they were giving out the thundersticks," said Andrea Adcock, a fourth-grade teacher at Benton's Ringgold Elementary. "As long as the kids are happy. This school year's been so weird and really, we just want them to have fun, something memorable besides masks and social distancing."

There were 85 fourth-graders with Adcock's group -- one of multiple Benton School District groups at the game -- and they happily played around on the left-field berm, taking their masks off when they could spread out.

When Adcock and the other Ringgold teachers called them up for lunch, they sprinted to the top of the hill and eagerly lined up to grab a hot dog, bag of chips and drink.

Many pupils, including Miley Sheridan, one of Adcock's students, never had been to a professional baseball game.

"Our whole class was like, 'Aaaaaah!!! ' " Miley said when asked how she and her friends reacted to the news of the trip. "They were telling me that going to a game was fun and you'd get to eat a lot of food -- and maybe get a ball."

At any chance to sing along with a tune they knew -- be it the "SpongeBob SquarePants" theme (which was played no fewer than four times) or a tune from "Frozen" -- the ballpark seemed to join in together. And whenever the DJ turned up the music between innings, you didn't have to look far to find a group of kids dancing.

"It's one of the main reasons why we play this game -- to give back to those kids," Cowan said. "We want to show them that they can keep trying to achieve their dreams because it's very hard, but we want to give those kids hope."