For Tremont's Kids, a Sunday Kickball Game Has Become One Man's Promise to Do More. What began as an impromptu Sunday gathering became a reminder of what children need from the communities that raise them.
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For Tremont’s Kids, a Sunday Kickball Game Has Become One Man’s Promise to Do More.

What began as an impromptu Sunday gathering became a reminder of what children need from the communities that raise them.

Shaun Farrar

Aug 04, 2026

A group of four people engaged in a game outdoors, with a boy in a blue shirt running while a man in an orange shirt prepares to throw a ball. Two other observers are watching the action, surrounded by a chain-link fence and greenery.

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Viridian Law.

Logo of Viridian Law featuring stylized mountains and the text 'VIRIDIAN LAW'.

TREMONT—There’s going to be another kickball game in two weeks, according to Jayson “Cluffer” Clough, Monday on his social media, but before he made that announcement, he had some things to say.

Those things?

They all had to do with some of the kids of Tremont, some of the kids that played in his kickball game on Sunday out on the field behind the Tremont Consolidated School, some of the kids that played with heart and grit.

“I’m reflecting back on yesterday’s kickball game, and it was awesome,” Clough said on social media Monday.

He hoped people wouldn’t take it wrong, he said, and he loves the entire island and has ties with every single community, but Tremont has his heart.

“Here’s these kids out here playing kickball and they are such great athletes. They’re working hard; they’ve got athletic ability; they’re coachable,” he said.

And across the island are other kids playing in the three-day Marty Lyons Tournament. The uniforms are snazzy. There are announcers. There are nice fields. Those regular games and practices, like many others in Bar Harbor or Mount Desert, are also harder to consistently get to for kids from Tremont and Southwest Harbor.

“Things are harder over here than people think. Families don’t have the money to provide for their children,” Clough said. “These kids yesterday … I had kids there who didn’t have a pair of shoes.”

You could tell, he said, that some of the kids have hard lives.

Clough wants to do something about that. In two hours, about 25 other people posted that they’d like to help him do just that.

Clough’s already started that help. It began with that kickball game that was meant to be fun and community building and some exercise and team work. It’s ended up being an impetus for change.

A man holding a red kickball while shouting, wearing a gray T-shirt and a cap, with green trees in the background.
A young boy running on a field towards a red kickball, with a chain-link fence and trees in the background.
A group of three people, including two kids and an adult, standing near a chain-link fence on a sunny day. The adult is wearing sunglasses and a blue t-shirt, while one child has a striped shirt and a wrist brace, and the other is dressed in a camouflaged shirt. They appear to be engaged in conversation.
A man with a beard wearing an orange shirt and camouflage shorts is catching a red kickball in an open field.

It’s not everyone who would pull out and dust off the Bee Gees’ Night Fever and make a Facebook dance video in preparation for an off the cuff community kickball game, but Clough did.

It’s also not everyone that would realize that when you are proud of your community and want to help build that community, you have to include the kids, for they are truly the continuation of community.

“It just came off the top of my head. I figured Sunday is a good day to get together. Just came right off the top of my head and I put it on Facebook, to see whose coming,” he said, Sunday.

Clough put his idea for a community kickball game on his Facebook page on July 28 to see what would happen as “just an opportunity for kids and families to do something.”

Not much better proof of kids being the future of community could be offered than what happened on Sunday, August 2, at the Tremont Consolidated School baseball field. Approximately 15 kids and adults showed up.

A boy running while holding a red rubber ball, with another child walking in the background on a gravel field.
Two men are smiling and chatting outdoors near a chain-link fence, one is shirtless and tattooed, and the other is wearing a cap and sunglasses.
A man wearing a black shirt and a brown cap is holding a red kickball in a green outdoor setting.
A man in an orange shirt and camouflage shorts joyfully throws his hands up while standing on a grassy field. He has a beard and sunglasses, with trees and boats in the background.
A man in athletic clothing is kicking a red rubber ball in a grassy field near a chain-link fence, with trees in the background.
Two children playing kickball on a gravel field, with one falling to the ground as the red ball rolls past.

At the 1 p.m. start time, there were only enough players to field a team of kids and a team of adults. By the end of the first inning, the adult team had lost the majority, if not all, of its three players to physical attrition and had to call a time out. The kids? One couldn’t even tell they had run a base or two. They were smiling and ready for more.

After that first inning, more adults, and more importantly, more kids arrived. That adult team was so happy to see more participants because it meant a better community building event, but if you listened closely you could hear soft mutterings or greetings with hidden meanings.

“Phew, I don’t think I had another inning in me.”

“Hey, it’s so to nice to see you guys, now we can field two teams of kids.”

The adults still played, but now they could take on less physical roles and spend their time assisting, mentoring, base coaching, and teaching the kids about rules, sportsmanship, and a game many of them seemed unfamiliar with.

A girl in a camouflage shirt and brown pants is playing kickball, lifting her leg to kick a red ball. In the background, a boy stands watching near a chain-link fence surrounded by greenery.
A young boy wearing a gray t-shirt and jeans throwing a red ball in a grassy field with trees in the background.
A man in sunglasses and a black t-shirt running on a grassy field with two children in the background, one looking back and the other in a gray shirt.
A young person stands beside a chain-link fence in a field, wearing a loose gray t-shirt and blue jeans.
A girl kicks a large red kickball on a grassy field with a chain-link fence in the background.
Four children standing outdoors, holding bottles of water, dressed in casual summer clothing. One child in a bright green shirt looks curiously at another.

Clough spends his days trying to make the world a better place by instilling within the people that he works with more skills and capabilities for dealing with that ever changing world. His off time? He does the same thing.

From local, social media presented food reviews, to emceeing community events, to posting an impromptu inspirational video, to creating his own community events, Clough always makes sure the kids of that community are major players or at least understand that someday they will be the major players, they will be the community.

When asked about the teams being adults versus children after the end of the first inning, “to start, hopefully they filter in before I pass out,” Clough said. And they did, more kids showed up and more fun was had by all.

Clough said he was going to try and make the community kickball game an annual event.

“It made my heart sick knowing that I had a child out there playing that gave his whole heart and listened the whole game who didn’t actually have a pair of shoes,” Clough said, voice breaking.

A young boy wearing a bright green shirt and gray shorts walks across a grassy field, holding something in his hands. His clothes are dirty, indicating he has been playing outside.
A young boy standing outdoors near a body of water, wearing a blue and gray striped shirt and a wrist support, smiling and looking towards the distance with greenery in the background.
A young girl in a camouflage shirt smiles while standing near a chain-link fence in a green outdoor setting.
A boy in a black t-shirt is poised to throw a red kickball while playing outdoors on a sunny day.

His goal is to get something started so that the kids in Tremont and Southwest Harbor can have all the same opportunities as the kids in Bar Harbor and Mount Desert.

“It’s strictly because of money that they don’t have this opportunity,” he said. “I want to get something started here on the backside.”

In the meantime, his intended annual kickball game is coming back in just two weeks.

“Some of these kids, they’re already begging for another one,” he said.

And he’s going to give it to them.

So, yes, two weeks from now, they will come back to the field behind the school, open the fence and head on in.

There will be more kids, Clough says. More adults, too. There will be a red ball and bases and somebody will probably have to explain the rules again. There will be parents standing along the edge of the field or playing with braces wrapped around their knees, and there will be people laughing and pretty much all the adults will get tired long before the kids do.

And maybe, this time, every kid will have a pair of shoes if they want them.

That is not a very big thing, in the grand accounting of the world.

But on a school field in Tremont, where about 15 people showed up because one man put a kickball game on Facebook, it is a beginning.

Now, Clough hopes, they’ll have a whole community waiting for them and supporting them.

We’ll have more details about the next game and ways to help as soon as we know them. In the meantime, you can contact Jayson via Facebook. His profile is here.

Photos: Shaun Farrar and Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story

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