In October, 32-year-old Keyonce Lucas will celebrate his second anniversary as Club Director for the Boys & Girls Club of Brown County.

“I moved down here from Abilene, and before I moved here I was a group home manager for kids with autism and intellectual development disabilities,” Lucas said. “I was looking for a job and they told me the Boys & Girls Club would be good if I wanted to help out in the community like I did before.”

As Club Director, Lucas manages discipline and behavioral issues with kindness and grace. He displays patience with all Club members, and works to focus on the root of their problems, working through emotions and assisting Club members in understanding their feelings and reactions in situations. Lucas leads the boys groups in curriculum regarding what it means to be a man in the world today, addressing societal and gender norms, and core values important to each child.

“The most rewarding part is seeing the kids actually change,” Lucas said. “My job is to make it fun here for the kids. A lot of the kids don’t know why they are having some of the emotions they are having or the reason they’re feeling why they’re feeling. What we do here is focus on their values and it’s nice seeing a kid that doesn’t know why they are acting the way they are figure out a way to respond to the situation and behave differently. Seeing that change in them is amazing.”

Lucas also oversees safety and security at the Boys & Girls Club of Brown County.

“Everything that goes on with the building such as organizing community events and the security of the building and making sure all the kids are safe,” Lucas said of his additional responsibilities. “We run monthly safety meetings for the staff and weekly drills like fire drills, gun drills, tornado drills, things like that so they can be prepared if something is happening that is an emergency.”

The fact that those who attend the Club feel safer than they have in years past is what Lucas is most proud of during his tenure.

“We have a national survey that lets us know how we’re doing at the club, none of the kids and staff know who takes part in the survey, it’s all anonymous,” Lucas said. “But that survey lets us know they feel a lot safer here than they did in previous years, we improved 20 percent. They are also having more fun here, we went up 30 percent from the previous year. And they feel safe around their peers, which is a big one for me because we went from at one point 15 percent in the past to 83 percent now. That’s really awesome.”

Away from the Club, Lucas said, “I’m a gamer and I’ve gotten back into running a bit. I used to be in gymnastics in high school and was a tumbler and I’ve kept that with me. In my spare time I like to go tumble at the air park or sometimes on the ground when I’m feeling daring.”

Regarding the future of the Club, Lucas wants to see it expand more and live up to its name.

“We do cover all of Brown County and we’re trying to get further involved with the county part and not just Brownwood,” he said. “We want to actually cover all of Brown County. We want people to know what we actually do here. People just think we’re a daycare but we’re actually an after school program and do a lot more.”

Lucas added the Boys & Girls Club of Brown County will be hosting its Back to School Bash from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 11.

“The direction we want to take the club is to make it a little bigger and we just want to get more involved with the community,” he said.