Andalusia director of leisure services Dwight Mikel said the number of kids involved with youth sports this summer was “up.”

“It went pretty well,” Mikel said. “Our numbers were up in certain areas than in previous years.”

Mikel said the reason why there was so much involvement this summer is because of two things.

“There is the local aspect of it, and that kicks off in early April as far as play is concerned,” he said. “The second phase was our All-Star play, which starts in the latter part of June. We had a pretty successful year there. We got to host the regional tournaments for the girls and they did very well. We had two age groups that went to Virginia to compete as well.”

Mikel said along with youth baseball and softball, the Andalusia Stingrays swim team had a successful summer.

“The swim league had a great year too,” he said. “The kids fared well in the local, district and state meets. We had a good representation in both Dothan and Cullman at those meets.”

Mikel said the most popular areas of the youth sports programs were in the younger age divisions.

“When you look at our team sports, the larger numbers are in the younger children,” Mikel said. “The (5-year-olds), sixes, sevens and eights have larger numbers than the older kids,” he said. “You may have five or six teams in the younger groups and you may only have three or four teams that get into the 11s or 12s.

“That’s pretty much consistent every where,” he added.

As of right now, the Andalusia soccer league has kicked off another season, and Mikel said the league has a good turnout once again.

“We’ve got our soccer beginning to kick off and, of course as we move on into winter, we have basketball,” he said. “I’m looking forward to another good year next year.”

Mikel said he was happy with what the teams accomplished during the summer season this year.

“We enjoyed the success all the kids had this year,” he said.