When Aubrey G. first started attending her clubhouse in Hawthorne, she didn’t have much of a choice. Her dad had full days working at the base, and no babysitter for her at the time.
Now a sixth-grader old enough to watch herself, Aubrey can still be found at Boys & Girls Clubs of Mason Valley almost every single day.
“It’s so fun here,” she said “I tell my friends there are a lot of opportunities for you that you can have.”
Aubrey’s favorite thing to do at the Club is help out. The Hawthorne clubhouse has a lot of younger members, and she can usually be found helping a group with their homework, reading to them or showing them something brand new.
But, the Club has helped Aubrey a lot too.
“If it wasn’t for the Club, I don’t think I would have ever made any new friends.”
Aubrey’s never been very social, but the Club and her clubhouse director, Juanita, have really broken her out of her shell. She talks to more people, has several new friends she met at the Club, and isn’t afraid to reach out when she needs something. She does better in school now, able to ask her teachers for help, and not feel like she needs to stay tucked away.
Her new social skills really showed off in the summer of 2023. Those long days at the Club can get slow, so she gathered some friends – new and old – together and created the Summer Squad. A group of kids that was open to everyone, the Summer Squad was inseparable, always coming up with games they could play during free time, sitting together during lunch and dinner, and hanging out.
“It was really nice having our group,” she said. “And it was a great way to get some of the new members involved so they felt welcomed.”
Now a diehard Club Kid, Aubrey recently ran for Junior Youth of the Year, the first member from Hawthorne to ever compete in the Club’s annual recognition program. She was able to give her speech in front of more than 300 people, an easy task after representing her clubhouse on stage at Night in the Country during the 2025 festival.
Aubrey loves going on field trips with the Club, especially to the trampoline parks. She also enjoys learning and exploring nature in Exploring the Walker Basin, a science program partnership between Boys & Girls Clubs of Mason Valley and the Walker Basin Conservancy.
When she’s not doing programming at the Club or helping out a group of little ones, Aubrey can be found at the softball field playing with Hawthorne Little League or hanging out with her friends Kaiden, Kennedy and Grayslen.