Also from Japan, Kyoto announced they will sign Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (formerly Chris Jackson) the 40 year old 6′1 PG with amazing shooting ability who played collegiately at LSU and for several years in the NBA (Denver Nuggets). Abdual-Rauf has also played in the Euroleague in the past.
http://netscoutsbasketball.com/blog/2009/08/31/overseas-basketball-signings-fiba-americas-news/
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Boston to get school athletics boost
Boston to get school athletics boost
Foundation created to funnel millions to underfunded programs, hire coaches
By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff | August 3, 2009
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino will announce today the creation of a multimillion-dollar charitable foundation and consortium of professional sports teams, colleges and universities, and corporations to enhance opportunities for Boston student-athletes - a potential breakthrough for Boston’s chronically underfunded high school athletic system.
The partnership plans to boost the annual athletic budget for the Boston public schools over the next three years from about $4 million to an average of $6.5 million, a 61.5 percent increase with the potential to restore the system’s respectability. Menino launched the initiative after a Globe series detailed deep-rooted inadequacies in equipment, facilities, coaching, and academic eligibility in the school sports system.
“It’s a new renaissance for the athletic and academic programs in the Boston public schools,’’ Menino said Friday. “These kids need help, and we’re going to give them that little extra to make sure they’re successful.’’
In an innovative collaboration that grants a private organization unusual power in managing public schools, Roxbury-based Suffolk Construction Co.’s Red & Blue Foundation will administer the new Boston Scholar Athlete Program. Foundation officials - including a new executive athletic director and chief academic officer - will report directly to Menino and participate in hiring and evaluating coaches.
Initial indications are that the Boston Teachers Union will agree to the arrange ment. “I think we’ll be able to work this out,’’ union president Richard Stutman said yesterday, “but the people in each school need to have a say in who gets hired.’’
Suffolk CEO John F. Fish, whose foundation contributed $1 million to launch the initiative, said the mission is to promote academic achievement through athletic success.
“The kids in the city of Boston deserve this,’’ said Fish, whose foundation has spent millions of dollars building and improving facilities for disadvantaged youth. “The business community, the pro teams, and the colleges and universities will be good partners in making this a reality.’’
The city for many years has spent less than a half-percent of its total budget on athletics, far below the state and national averages.
“In an economic crisis like we’re having now,’’ Fish said, “it’s almost incumbent on the businesses and citizens of the community to step forward and say: ‘They need our help now. Do we truly want to make a difference?’ ’’
Menino said he expects “100 percent’’ participation from Boston’s professional sports teams, which previously indicated to the Globe that they would contribute to the cause if the city asked. Every major college and university in Boston has also agreed to provide goods and services, including academic tutors, through the foundation, Menino and Fish said. Brighton-based New Balance also has pledged major support, as has Dorchester-based Good Sports, a nonprofit that distributes athletic gear to needy youths.
“That’s only the tip of the iceberg,’’ Fish said of the community’s financial support.
The program is expected to provide some relief to Ken Still, the city’s lone athletic director for 18 high schools. In addition to providing administrative support, the foundation will have the time to raise money and organize clinics to improve coaching and participation in school sports.
Boston School Superintendent Carol R. Johnson expressed enthusiasm for the program, particularly its emphasis on academics. She helped Fish develop standards such as classroom attendance and grade point averages to measure the program’s success.
“The academic and athletic pieces together are the strength of this initiative,’’ Johnson said. “It’s a lot more focused on both than we’ve had before.’’
Johnson said Still, who was on vacation and not available for comment, was “excited because it’s really an investment in developing the coaches and helping with equipment and uniforms . . . I think he sees it as a really important partnership.’’
The program marks the start of a new era for the city’s coaches. Although Boston boasts some of the best in the state - coaches expert in teaching sports and highly committed to ensuring their athletes succeed as students and citizens - many others in the city lack the proficiency, mentoring skills, and dedication required for their players to thrive.
The foundation plans to establish new job criteria for coaches that stress academics and mentoring. Foundation officials also expect to play a key role in hiring, despite the city’s contract with the Boston Teachers Union, which grants teachers preference and gives headmasters the final authority in hiring.
“The Red & Blue Foundation, with the mayor and the superintendent of schools, needs to have the authority to select coaches,’’ Fish said. “If we don’t have that authority, it’s impossible for us to control the outcome we’re looking for.’’
Stutman, the union president, applauded the effort to upgrade the athletic system but indicated that teachers may be less receptive to waiving the contract’s hiring rules. Boston high school coaches rank among the best paid in the state, with stipends next fall ranging from $4,947 for volleyball and soccer coaches to $10,778 for football coaches. Still, he said, an accommodation can probably be reached.
Fish said the foundation aims to raise $2 million in cash and in-kind contributions this school year, $2.5 million the following year, and $3 million in 2011-12.
With schools scheduled to open in less than six weeks, the foundation’s immediate goals are hiring the new executives, recruiting board members (Linda Whitlock, former CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, already has joined), and launching a plan to improve the system one sport at a time, first with boys and girls soccer this fall. Fish said every soccer player in the city will receive new uniforms and the equipment they need, including soccer goals for teams that practice on fields lacking them.
The foundation also plans to stage school fairs to encourage students, particularly girls, to participate. Several large high schools, including Charlestown, Dorchester, Hyde Park, and South Boston, fielded no girls soccer teams last year, partly because of low interest. Fish said the foundation will fund intramural soccer programs at schools without interscholastic teams.
“We need to get kids off the street corners and out of their houses watching TV in the afternoon,’’ he said.
The foundation’s schedule calls for overhauling boys and girls basketball teams next winter, then baseball and softball in the spring. Football and field hockey will be upgraded in the fall of 2010, followed by boys and girls indoor track that winter. In spring 2010, the foundation plans to launch the city’s first boys and girls lacrosse teams.
Teams scheduled for upgrades in 2011-12 are cross-country, ice hockey, and outdoor track.
The plan also calls for academic incentives. Once a year, the city will stage a gala celebrating high school athletes, especially those who get good grades.
“We don’t just want great athletes,’’ Menino said. “We want scholar-athletes who can cut it after their athletic days are over.’’
City seeks heroes to rescue school athletics
FAILING OUR ATHLETES > PART 7
City seeks heroes to rescue school athletics
3 professional teams express early interest
By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff | June 27, 2009
With local school athletic systems in crisis, professional sports teams in some American cities have rushed to the rescue.
In Denver, charitable arms of the Avalanche, Broncos, Nuggets, and Rockies have contributed more than $1 million over the last five years to improve sports in the public schools. In Cleveland, the Browns donated $300,000 to the city’s school athletic department, and the Indians kicked in $250,000.
In San Francisco, the Giants and 49ers agreed to a ticket tax - 25 cents for every Giants ticket, 75 cents for every 49ers ticket over $27 - to help fund the city’s athletic programs. The fees have generated about $1 million a year for sports in the schools.
“The teams were heroes,’’ said Don Collins, the San Francisco district’s athletic director. “They made us viable again.’’
Will there be similar heroes in Boston? After a Globe review found the city’s high school athletics program plagued by serious inadequacies in funding, facilities, equipment, coaching, and oversight, city leaders were scrambling for answers this week to problems that have festered for years and have cost countless students opportunities to make the most of their athletic abilities.
The cash-strapped Boston School Department has routinely allocated less than a half percent of its total budget to athletics, far below state and national averages.
“It really would help us a heck of a lot if the professional teams stepped up to the plate and contributed,’’ said School Committee member Alfreda Harris, long an advocate for youth sports.
Boston’s professional teams expressed preliminary interest this week in helping the city’s struggling school athletic program. The teams already contribute to urban programs aimed at improving health care, education, and recreational opportunities for needy children.
A high-ranking city official said the Red Sox are weighing a significant contribution after the Globe series. The Red Sox Foundation already contributes $200,000 a year for summer baseball and softball for Boston youth and $325,000 annually for Red Sox Scholars in the city’s schools.
“In a time of great need, there is always more we can all do, and we’re happy to work with the mayor, the School Department, other sports teams and supporters to try to provide young people in our community with more healthy, active, and safe programs that serve their needs,’’ said Meg Vaillancourt, the foundation’s executive director.
Celtics president Rich Gotham said, “If the city of Boston were to approach the Boston sports teams with a program that demonstrated how assistance provided by the teams could benefit school athletic programs in a way that positively impacts the lives of students, it’s something we would carefully consider, along with the many other causes we support through the Shamrock Foundation.’’
The Bruins, too, are poised to field a request for help.
“If the Boston public schools were to apply for a grant to help the city’s scholastic athletic programs, the Boston Bruins Foundation’s board would certainly be willing to give them consideration,’’ said Bruins executive vice president Charlie Jacobs.
Examples of support
While the longstanding problems in Boston’s athletic program raise questions about whether city leaders have the political will to make the necessary improvements - the problems will take more than money to fix - no one disputes that major financial contributions from private sources would address many needs.
“In an era of shrinking revenues, we would welcome any additional assistance,’’ School Superintendent Carol R. Johnson said of the prospect of the city’s professional teams helping to save sports in the schools.
The Denver Public Schools Foundation, which supports both academic and athletic programs, has grown from giving $2 million to the school system in 2004 to more than $6 million last year. The city’s athletic department has received more than $250,000 a year, helping to fund a vibrant middle school sports league in which youths compete in football, soccer, basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, and cross-country.
The only interscholastic sports programs offered at Boston’s 22 middle schools are basketball and spring track.
“We’re very fortunate that all of Denver’s professional sports teams have been incredibly supportive of the athletes in the Denver public schools,’’ said Kristin Colon, the foundation’s president.
Cleveland’s pro teams responded to a deeper crisis than Boston’s. They stepped up after budget cuts in 2005 threatened the future of the city’s high school football and baseball teams.
The story was similar in San Francisco, with the Giants and 49ers rushing in after budget writers in 1988 zeroed out funding for high school sports. The ticket tax has helped fund programs since 1991, but it never has been enough to fully support the city’s school sports teams. To help, San Francisco voters in 2004 approved a $20 million annual enrichment fund for chronically underfunded programs, of which about $2.4 million a year goes to athletics.
The San Francisco school district allocates only $600,000 a year to high school sports.
“In a properly run system, the district would fully fund athletics,’’ Collins said. “Without the two other pots of money, we would be out of business.’’
The additional support allows San Francisco to provide high school students a broader range of athletic opportunities than Boston provides. Students attending at least half of San Francisco’s 12 high schools can participate in interscholastic fencing, badminton, golf, and tennis, as well as the traditional sports, which all 12 schools offer.
Boston athletic director Ken Still said he would welcome aid from Boston’s pro sports teams. Together, they sell about 4.5 million tickets a year.
“I would take 5 cents a ticket,’’ he said, referring to a version of San Francisco’s ticket fee.
The prospect of the Massachusetts Legislature approving such a tax is highly unlikely, which means that Boston needs either to increase public funding for athletics or seek additional aid from private sources.
Considering the enormous financial capital in Boston, the resources exist to support school athletics across the city on a much larger scale. For example, Boston Latin’s alumni generated more than $100,000 a year for sports.
In New York, by contrast, Loews executive Robert Tisch raised $140 million before he died in 2005 to renovate more than 40 athletic fields for public school students.
“It would be great if somebody donated $150,000,’’ Still said. “We could really establish goals and have some outside consultants do the fund-raising for us.’’
Building on partnerships
Community leaders, meanwhile, have indicated they need to strengthen the links between the schools and public and private groups that provide opportunities, facilities, services, and transportation for children to play sports, particularly at a younger age. Boston’s high school teams generally fare poorly against suburban competition because they lack dynamic feeder programs.
Dan Lebowitz, executive director of Northeastern’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society, said a recent study showed that Boston’s youth have one-third the opportunities to participate in sports as their suburban counterparts. “The situation in Boston’s high schools is an outgrowth of the youth sports participation problem,’’ he said.
Many youth sports groups are trying to fill the void, some through partnerships with the schools. Boston-based Tenacity, for one, helps run a pilot program at Umana Middle School in East Boston in which the school day is extended until 4:15 p.m. and students receive extra help with academics and tennis instruction. The program also reaches out to parents, which is vital to improving children’s academic and athletic lives.
“It’s critical that the school system, the state Legislature, and everyone involved be willing to take some risks and try these new innovative approaches to the problem,’’ Tenacity president Ned Eames said.
Youth advocates said the city needs to build on partnerships with organizations such as Young Savants, which helps Boston high school students develop learning, basketball, and character skills. Young Savants founder Ben Okiwe, a probation officer who recently stepped down as boys basketball coach at Lincoln-Sudbury to focus on his nonprofit, said working with children is only part of the challenge.
“Moving forward, the parental support is key,’’ he said. “So are the coaches. We need to create an atmosphere that will help them be the best they can be, and Boston school athletics will be better for it.’’
City leaders said this week that they are considering ways to improve the quality of coaches in the city. They also plan to address the equipment shortage and said they expect to continue working with Boston University to provide more athletic trainers for the city’s high school athletes. Currently, there is only one trainer for 18 high schools.
No one wishes city leaders greater success than the shortchanged athletes. Brighton High football player Alex Tisme said, “In the future, I hope the younger kids get something better than we had.’’
Bob Hohler can be reached at hohler@globe.com.
That awful empty feeling
FAILING OUR ATHLETES > PART 6
That awful empty feeling
With spirit and support lagging, lack of attendance is a going concern
By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff | June 26, 2009
It was senior night, South Boston High School's final home football game of the 2008 season, and coach Sean Guthrie wanted to make it memorable for the players who were ending their high school careers. Unable to find anyone in city government to switch on the public address system, Guthrie rented a generator, hauled a pair of speakers to Saunders Stadium at Moakley Park, and asked a fellow teacher to serve as the announcer for a ceremony honoring the seniors.
Forget that the scoreboard had not worked for seven years and that the new artificial turf had drained poorly from a recent storm. Everything else seemed in order as South Boston ran up a comfortable lead against Charlestown, clearing the way for a once-in-a-lifetime halftime ceremony for the team̢۪s 10 seniors.
The only problem: Almost no one bothered to show up.
As Guthrie’s colleague called the roll of South Boston’s seniors, he shared the grandstand with 11 spectators.
It was “Friday Night Lights,’’ Boston-style: 11 supporters for more than 60 players, coaches, and cheerleaders. As thousands of commuters rolled past on the nearby expressway and downtown financial towers twinkled in the distance, the expanse of empty bleachers in the football stadium looked like the aftermath of a fire drill.
The scene is common at high school sports events across the city, where athletes rarely hear the roar of a crowd, see their parents, schoolmates, or teachers turn out to support them, or simply know that someone is taking note of special moments in their lives.
“It’s pitiful,’’ said Sandra Redish, the mother of a West Roxbury High cheerleader who has witnessed similar scenes at other competitions. “There should be a lot more parents here. What’s going on?’’
Guthrie, who played football for Boston College and in NFL Europe, was so dismayed by the empty stands that he changed the start of his Friday home games last season from 3:30 to 7 p.m., believing it would boost attendance. No such luck, even though admission was free.
“I don’t know where everybody is,’’ he said. “It’s a shame.’’
The turnout was no better for many events at White Stadium, the city’s premier high school stadium in Franklin Park, where football, soccer, and track teams compete.
“I love White Stadium, but it’s a sin when you play a game on a beautiful, 60-degree Friday afternoon and you turn around and there are only 10 people there,’’ said Paul Duhaime, Burke’s assistant football and head baseball coach.
Preoccupied parents
Coaches say it is heartrending to watch the efforts some students make to commute to schools and games through dangerous neighborhoods, maintain their academic eligibility, and dedicate themselves to their teams, only to play their games in virtual anonymity. Longtime coaches said attendance has faded as poverty has risen in the school population. Working parents who have no time to attend teacher meetings have even less time to attend sports events.
“The parents will never be there,’’ said Paulo De Barros, the Burke boys soccer coach who founded the Teen Center at St. Peter’s Church in Dorchester. “They are working two or three jobs so their families can survive.’’
Not a single parent turned out to support Burke in its tournament soccer game on a balmy Sunday afternoon last November against Wayland in Dorchester. In fact, De Barros benched several top players because they arrived late for a pregame meeting for reasons that reflected the hard demands of home. The benched players included Dory Vicente, one of the city’s best goalkeepers.
While more than 50 supporters cheered Wayland to its 2-0 victory, Vicente sat on the sidelines with his aunt, Maria DePina, a former BC track star who teaches at the Burke. With DePina translating his Cape Verdean Creole, Vicente said he arrived late because he needed to watch his siblings until his mother returned from her job as a hairdresser. His father was in Cape Verde.
“In the suburbs, God forbid if a parent doesn’t go to a game,’’ DePina said. “The problem in Boston is that nobody comes.’’
Charlestown track coach Kristyn Hughes, who competed before ample crowds as an athlete at Woburn High School before she pole vaulted for BC, was struck by the contrast to her own experience. Her Charlestown teams have won state championships the last two years with nationally competitive athletes, yet in her six years of coaching, she said, she has met only one parent at a meet.
Some of that is economic pressures. Some of the Charlestown players’ families are so needy, Hughes said, that when her students take home their medals, their parents ask, “How much can we get for them?’’
But some of it seems more like simple absenteeism.
“A lot of parents aren’t a big part of their children’s lives anymore,’’ said Madison Park football coach Roosevelt Robinson. “One of the saddest things is that I might see a parent at graduation, and I think, ‘I’ve had your child for four years and I’ve met you once or twice, or maybe not at all.’ ’’
School spirit is lacking
It is a situation exacerbated, at some schools, by teachers and administrators who show scant commitment to their schools’ athletes. Numerous coaches said their schools rarely, if ever, stage pregame rallies. Some coaches said they are rebuffed when they ask for team news to be broadcast on the school’s public address system. And only Boston Latin rallies its teams with a band.
“When I went to Latin in the ’70s, we had rallies and plenty of school spirit,’’ said Hyde Park softball coach Bruce Collotta as he rooted for the school’s football team against English. “But we’ve never had school spirit here.’’
Many coaches attribute the problem in part to the splintering of large education complexes into smaller schools. West Roxbury, Hyde Park, South Boston, and Dorchester each has been divided into at least three schools, each occupying a different section of the building. Lunch hours are separate, and interaction between students and teachers in the schools is extremely limited.
“Breaking up the school has really hurt us,’’ said West Roxbury football coach Brian Collins. “There’s not the same kind of pride. I went to the Walpole game one night and there were 5,000 people. We’re lucky if we get 50.’’
Boston School Superintendent Carol R. Johnson acknowledged the problem, though she commended three schools in Brighton - Brighton High, Another Course to College, and Boston Community Leadership Academy - for rallying together in Brighton High’s 2007 Division 4 Super Bowl victory.
“We have some schools that don’t really understand yet how to work together and promote athletics,’’ Johnson said, “but we know that it’s possible.’’
No sense of community
A lack of neighborhood ties also hurts. More than 30 years after the city began busing vast numbers of students out of their neighborhoods in an effort to achieve racial integration, so few students attend schools in their own geographic areas that local interest in sports teams has plummeted. The problem is especially acute in areas such as West Roxbury, South Boston, and Charlestown.
“I only have one kid from West Roxbury on my roster, so you can see why there’s no real community support,’’ Collins said.
Attendance is typically better for basketball, the city’s most popular high school sport. The crowds also are generally larger when teams from East Boston, Brighton, and a couple of exam schools are involved because their headmasters actively promote sports. But athletes at other Boston schools struggle for recognition.
When South Boston advanced to the Eastern Massachusetts football tournament last fall for the first time in a decade, its opponent, Martha’s Vineyard, rolled into the stadium in Taunton with busloads of fans, dwarfing the number of Southie supporters. South Boston’s crowd could have been much larger, but school administrators denied a request for a bus to shuttle students to the game.
South Boston lost, 42-14, after winning the city’s North Division championship. The experience left Guthrie with a bitter taste.
“Most schools, when you win a championship, they put up a banner in front of the school,’’ Guthrie said. “We haven’t seen one.’’
Brighton boys basketball coach Erle Garrett, who also officiates city football games, said he was “gravely disappointed’’ by the turnout at many high school games. He plans to send letters to parents next fall asking them which time slots would best enable them to attend their children’s contests.
“I don’t care when it is, I’ll change the schedule,’’ Garrett said. “They need to understand it’s part of being a parent. To save your kids, you’ve got to be around your kids.’’
The problem may not be easily solved, said Ken Still, Boston’s athletic director. He said it demands the community’s attention.
“This is the kind of thing that needs to change if we are going to get high school sports in the city going again,’’ Still said. “It’s going to take a lot of work.’’
Bob Hohler can be reached at hohler@globe.com.
Coaches in the crossfire
FAILING OUR ATHLETES > PART 5
Coaches in the crossfire
Competence, commitment questioned; hiring/firing system also seen as flawed
By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff | June 25, 2009
Number of years Keith Parker has coached football at English High School: 29.
Number of times Parker's teams have defeated Boston Latin in the nation's oldest continuous high school football rivalry: 2.
To some of Parker's critics, even those who witnessed English's 36-0 loss last Thanksgiving to a winless Latin team, the won-lost record is excusable. What's not acceptable to them is how Parker has presided over the decline of English's once-formidable football program. Winners of divisional Super Bowls in 1993 and '97, Parker's teams have since gone 42-76 and struggled for respectability.
Parker’s critics said he no longer exerts the energy, enthusiasm, and innovation to sustain a competitive program in an era when city coaches need to work harder than ever to overcome a multitude of challenges. Parker, 64, kept his coaching job after he retired last year from teaching at English.
“I love the man, but his time has passed,’’ said Clarzell Pearl, who starred for Parker’s teams in the 1980s and served as his assistant for several years, including last season. “It’s time for him to go.’’
Pearl and numerous other critics, including former NFL draftee Erle Garrett, who has coached against Parker and officiated his games, have expressed their views to Ken Still, the city’s athletic director. Still shares their opinion.
“Parker is a friend of mine, but it’s time for him to go,’’ Still said. “He’s still in the same mold he was 30 years ago, running the same stuff, and it doesn’t work.’’
Still said he would remove Parker if he could. But in a city where the best coaches routinely complain about ill-prepared, uncommitted, and underqualified colleagues failing their student-athletes, the hiring and firing of coaches is controlled by each school’s headmaster rather than the athletic director, who may be better suited for the task.
English headmaster Jose Duarte recently appointed Parker to coach his 30th season.
“I don’t know who’s trying to do Keith Parker in, but I’m not,’’ Duarte said. “Keith Parker is a gentleman who cares deeply about our kids. Some people only care about winning, but high school football is about developing young men to work as a team and developing them to understand the hard work it takes to achieve success. Keith Parker has done that.’’
Parker said he continues to give everything he has to the job.
“For 29 years at English High School, I have been the best I can be and I have helped the kids be the best they can be,’’ he said. “I understand that we all need to move aside one day for the younger guys, but I want to go out on my terms and I think I’ve earned that right.’’
As for Parker’s record against Latin, the coach described the rivalry as a monumental mismatch. Latin’s enrollment is three times the size of English’s, and while Latin is predominantly white (31 percent) and African-American (28 percent), English is mostly Hispanic (52 percent). As a result, English is far more competitive in baseball and soccer than football.
“I can win if I have the talent,’’ Parker said, “but I can’t wave a magic wand and make it happen.’’
Lucrative side job
Parker will coach another year because headmasters are empowered under the city’s contract with the Boston Teachers Union to hire and fire coaches. The policy, which gives union teachers preference for coaching positions, grants the final hiring authority to headmasters.
“The process is working well,’’ union president Richard Stutman said.
A number of other coaches disagree.
“Let our athletic director function like other athletic directors by hiring and firing his coaches,’’ said Garrett, the Brighton High basketball coach. “He has the expertise. Let him take the ball and run with it.’’
Under the system, coaching candidates are first interviewed by Still, who sends the headmaster a written evaluation and recommendation. Still said Parker is one of numerous coaches who have been hired or retained against his written or verbal recommendations.
“There are a whole lot of people who are coaching in the city who shouldn’t be,’’ Still said. “In a system of this magnitude, with 275 coaches, you would like to have 80-90 percent who are committed to the job and know what they’re doing. We’re not there yet.’’
Boston coaches rank among the highest-paid in the state, with salaries ranging from $2,777 for wrestling and tennis to $10,414 for head football coaches. There are too few coaches, however, and some of them see an inequity in the salaries.
Soccer coaches, for instance, earn $4,947, less than the assistant coaches in football ($6,147), basketball ($5,456), and baseball ($5,205). And soccer coaches have no paid assistants.
“My [former] principal told me to get an assistant and pay him $500 out of my salary,’’ Brighton boys soccer coach Matt Krebs said. “I find it absurd that I was asked to do that.’’
Another problem, according to Still and others, is that too many teachers become coaches only for the extra check. The additional salary can boost a teacher’s pension.
“I know there are coaches who do it only for the money,’’ said East Boston High hockey coach Robert Anthony, a Boston police officer. “You hate to see it.’’
Paul Duhaime, the head baseball coach and assistant football coach at Burke High School, said he could tolerate colleagues enhancing their pensions if they were committed to coaching.
“We make very good money,’’ he said, “but some people just aren’t doing their jobs.’’
That was news to Stutman.
“I know a lot of coaches, and not one of them does it for the money,’’ he said.
The city can take pride in many of its coaches. But the Globe received numerous accounts of others selling short their athletes. The accounts ranged from coaches routinely calling off outdoor practices at the slightest forecast of rain to others showing so little interest in the job that they read newspapers or chat on cellphones during games and practices. Other coaches were criticized for failing to teach students the fundamentals of their sports.
“Just because you’re a teacher doesn’t mean you’re a coach,’’ said Burke boys soccer coach Paulo De Barros, whose team won the city championship last fall. “Some coaches just throw the kids out on the field.’’
Filling voids
A number of coaches said headmasters have asked teachers to take over teams simply to fill voids. West Roxbury girls volleyball coach Margaret Hoyt has coached several sports throughout the city during a lengthy teaching career.
“When they needed a cheerleading coach, I did it because they needed a cheerleading coach, not because I was any kind of a cheerleading coach at all,’’ Hoyt said.
Some headmasters were said to prefer appointing trusted allies rather than the most competent coaching candidates.
“You have headmasters who don’t know anything about sports and it doesn’t make any difference to them who’s running the program as long as somebody is running it,’’ said Turi Lonero, who coached boys soccer at East Boston High School for 20 years and has coached the men’s teams at Northeastern and Salem State. Lonero said he was not referring to East Boston’s current headmaster, Mike Rubin, the school’s former basketball coach.
Still said he would welcome hiring and firing coaches, but he is unlikely to get the opportunity because of opposition from the teachers union and headmasters.
“Headmasters should have the say about who coaches at their schools,’’ Duarte said. “We know the kids in our schools and we know what they need to develop and be successful.’’
East Boston’s Rubin, a director of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, also defended the hiring policy, although he acknowledged problems may arise when headmasters lack expertise in sports.
“Those headmasters need to reach out for help from people in the community who have some experience in athletics,’’ Rubin said.
Most headmasters assign teachers to serve as their athletic coordinators for a small stipend or as volunteers. Yet most coordinators have little influence, according to some, including Charlestown’s coordinator, Steve Cassidy, who called the job “kind of a joke.’’
The best coaches commit year-round to the job, enriching their knowledge of their sports, tracking the grades of their players, encouraging students to join their programs. Many reach deep into their pockets to provide uniforms and equipment players need to compete.
Personal investment
As for Parker, Duarte said the veteran coach has made invaluable contributions to many at-risk youths by steering them away from the streets toward brighter futures. Duarte also suggested that some of Parker’s critics have personal agendas. Pearl, for instance, has made no secret he would like to succeed Parker.
“To have somebody take a shot at that man, after all he has done to turn the boys in our school into men, is really sad and unfair,’’ Duarte said.
The challenge for Parker and most other coaches in the city is making the best of what they have. For many, like Margaret Cash, who retired last year as a science teacher at Snowden International School and remains the school’s girls volleyball coach, it means investing extra hours and personal savings in their student athletes.
Cash estimated she has spent about $5,000 a year on her students. She bought a winter coat for a player. She took another player and her siblings for a meal after she visited them and found their refrigerator empty. She also counseled the family of a girl who showed up at practice with her suitcase because her immigrant mother told her she needed to live with the coach.
“The idea is to keep their morale up,’’ Cash said. “I tell them all they are champions in their own way.’’
Many of her colleagues said the challenge for city leaders is finding more coaches who care.
“Unfortunately,’’ said Madison Park football coach Roosevelt Robinson, “we have a lot who need to go.’’
Bob Hohler can be reached at hohler@globe.com.
Ill-equipped to compete
FAILING OUR ATHLETES > PART 4
Ill-equipped to compete
Poor facilities and gear put athletes behind before the games even start
By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff | June 24, 2009
Every new sports season in the Boston public schools starts with a reminder to all coaches: An athletic trainer is available for injured players. Trouble is, there is only one trainer for thousands of student-athletes in 18 high schools scattered over nearly 50 square miles of the city. To no one's surprise, only a small fraction of injured players receives treatment from the trainer, Flo Russo, because of the trouble reaching her office at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center in Roxbury.
Imagine telling kids on crutches in distant corners of the city to ride the T alone to Roxbury and find their way to Russo's office .
“It doesn't make sense,'' said Charlestown football coach George Farro, echoing the sentiments of several coaches.
Even worse, said East Boston headmaster Mike Rubin, are the number of students whose injuries go undiagnosed or are inadequately treated because of the shortage of trainers.
“I had one kid with a broken ankle and another with a broken clavicle, and I didn't realize it,'' said Rubin, the school's former basketball coach.
That's life for students in Boston's high school athletic system, many of whom practice in substandard conditions with too little gear and too few services. All too often, they are left to get by with the help of strangers, from physical therapists who contribute free care to grocery shoppers who donate spare change to help them buy equipment the city does not provide.
“The lesson the kids get is that the adults don't care about them,'' said Ben Okiwe, who recently resigned as boys basketball coach at Lincoln-Sudbury to help Boston's disadvantaged youths through his nonprofit organization, Young Savants.
In February, Okiwe attended a boys basketball playoff game between his alma mater, Boston Latin Academy, and Belmont, and watched a Latin Academy player hobble to the bench in pain. With no athletic trainer on site, Okiwe attended to the player, who was suffering from leg cramps.
“If there was a problem like that in the suburbs,'' Okiwe said of the trainer shortage, “it would be fixed.''
Russo, who also serves Roxbury Community College, said she does the best she can. But she almost never treats injured players from distant schools such as West Roxbury and East Boston, and the vast majority of her high school patients attend nearby Madison Park and O'Bryant.
“It would be nice if the city paid for a full-time assistant so we could get out there and help more kids,'' Russo said, “but I don't think that's going to happen because of the budget cuts.''
The city's athletic director, Ken Still, is working with Boston University to try to enlist more trainers through a grant program. Meanwhile, Kennedy Brothers Physical Therapy fills some of the gap by providing free care to Boston's injured student-athletes.
“We do it because of the incredible have-nots in the city,'' said owner Jake Kennedy, who chaired the urban subcommittee of the Governors Committee on Physical Fitness and Sports. “It's unbelievable what the city kids don't have, and their facilities are horrible.''
Budget disparity
Across the city, from the Charlestown football team training on a second-hand blocking sled spattered with bird droppings under the Tobin Bridge to the Hyde Park team trying to compete without weight training equipment, many other needs remain unmet. Many coaches try to make do by dipping into their personal savings, organizing fund-raising drives, or asking students to solicit spare change.
“We can't run teams on what the city gives us,'' said Robert Anthony, who coaches hockey at East Boston and has spent thousands of his own dollars on equipment, facility upgrades, and ice time.
The city allots high school football programs $1,700 a year to equip their varsity and junior varsity teams, while the annual budgets for other athletic programs range from $400 for cross-country to $900 for hockey. By contrast, Lincoln-Sudbury spends more than $4,800 a year just to equip its football team.
Most school districts in Massachusetts, like Lincoln-Sudbury, rely on user fees and boosters to support their athletic programs. Boston, whose student population is overwhelmingly low-income, funds its sports programs through the city budget, and few teams have enough to go around.
“Every coach at every school has to do some kind of fund-raising to meet their team's needs,'' said Michael Viggiano, whose Madison Park baseball team last month won the city championship. “It makes you wonder where athletics are on the totem pole in the Boston schools.''
Boston's high school equipment budget has not increased during athletic director Ken Still's six years on the job. During that time, the price of basic football helmets has more than doubled to $150 from $60, while the cost of other essentials has mushroomed.
“Steady doesn't work,'' Still said of the budget. “Things cost more, so the kids have less.''
One exception is the girls basketball team at English High School, whose coach, Ernie Green, said he considers the program's $800 annual budget generous. In past years, Green said, he shared his leftover equipment money with the school's football team.
Other Boston high schools try to make ends meet with external support. Boston Latin's athletic programs have received more than $100,000 annually from the school's alumni association, while East Boston's sports teams have received more than $20,000 a year from the Massport-funded East Boston Foundation.
“We definitely have an advantage because of it,'' Rubin said. “It has been a huge part of our success in athletics.''
Alumni groups at Boston English, Latin Academy, and O'Bryant have helped their sports programs. But Latin is the only Boston school that can match suburban athletic programs in booster support. Canton's community supporters, for example, donated $180,000 last year to high school sports, while booster clubs at Lincoln-Sudbury and Walpole each gave more than $100,000.
The disparity was stunning when Martha's Vineyard eliminated South Boston from last fall's football tournament. The Vineyard team, bolstered by $50,000 in booster support, dressed more than 40 players in the finest gear, while Southie fielded only 17 players, some of them in ragged uniforms and cleats. The Vineyard coaches, whose touchdown club pays for their scouting trips, communicated through headsets against their ill-equipped Southie counterparts and won the game, 42-14.
“A lot of times, we feel like second-class citizens,'' South Boston coach Sean Guthrie said.
Forced to improvise
The nonprofit Good Sports has eased some of the hardship by donating nearly $200,000 worth of athletic equipment to the Boston schools since 2005. Other charities have helped, including the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation, which has donated to Dorchester High.
“Unfortunately, we can only do so much for the Boston schools,'' said Christy Pugh Keswick, the chief operating officer of Good Sports. “We can give them equipment, but we can't solve their other issues.''
There is little Good Sports can do about the Hyde Park and Brighton football teams practicing on poor fields without goal posts. The Snowden basketball team plays in a cramped gym in the South End without seats for spectators.
Numerous outdoor teams have trained at remote sites without restrooms, including the Brighton football team, which routinely trudged to bathrooms at a restaurant in Cleveland Circle until City Councilor Mark Ciommo helped unlock a field house that had been shuttered for years. The decrepit facility has no running water, however, so the city last fall delivered a portable toilet to the field.
At Franklin Park, the four soccer teams from Latin Academy - varsity and JV boys and girls - share a practice field that has no soccer goal.
“That adds insult to injury,'' said boys varsity coach Dennis Allen. “If nothing else, it would be nice if our kids could practice shooting at a proper goal.''
At least Allen's team had enough uniforms. Members of the Latin Academy track team, like Charlestown and others, have so few uniforms that they need to share them during meets. “It's pretty gross,'' said Latin Academy coach Brian Leussler.
Troubling, too, was a maintenance snafu that caused the city to temporarily close a number of pools during the high school swim season, prompting swimmers to drop off several teams.
“The city kicked us to the curb like yesterday's rubbish,'' said East Boston swim coach Dave Arinella, who logged his 250th career victory in the shortened season. “We had no pool for 3 1/2 weeks, and all we could do was watch DVDs about swimming.''
Many outdoor teams have benefited from the construction of artificial turf high school fields at Charlestown, English, South Boston, and East Boston, as well as Madison Park and O'Bryant, which share a field. However, the scoreboards have not worked for years at South Boston and Madison Park/O'Bryant, significantly diminishing the game experience.
One major benefit for Boston high school athletes is the Reggie Lewis Center, a premier indoor track venue. Most of the city's high school track teams train and compete there. But because the center is available to the Boston schools only from 2-4 p.m., teams at schools with late release times like Boston English (3:35 p.m.) are relegated to practicing in school hallways.
English's disadvantaged athletes finished no better than third in the 22 individual events in the Boston City League championships in February.
“We would be a much better team if we weren't practicing on the fifth floor of our school,'' said English captain Abel Burgos. “If we could train on a track, we would have more endurance and learn more strategies, like how to run in lanes and pace ourselves.''
Charlestown track coach Kristyn Hughes said much of her job involves hunting for equipment that colleges or suburban schools plan to discard so she can meet her program's basic needs. Despite the deprivation, though, her boys team won the state outdoor title last year and the indoor championship this year.
“Because of everything we have to go through, it feels like such a sense of accomplishment when we win,'' Hughes said. “It's like, ‘Wow, we beat the system. We beat the odds. We overcame all the negativity surrounding inner-city schools and did something positive.' ''
Bob Hohler can be reached at hohler@globe.com.
Eligibility a high hurdle
FAILING OUR ATHLETES > PART 3
Eligibility a high hurdle
Just getting enough student-athletes into the game can often be a struggle
By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff | June 23, 2009
He was the golden boy, a football captain and student leader handpicked by the headmaster of Burke High School to appear on stage with Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston last September as a symbol of hope at the start of a new school year. But Brandon Cook was headed for a fall.
Presented as a college-bound senior, Cook beamed as Menino unveiled his pride and glory, a $49.5 million upgrade to the long-embattled school in the gang-plagued Grove Hall section of Dorchester. Student-athletes such as Cook, who received a commemorative basketball from Menino, were expected to especially benefit from the project, which featured a gleaming new gymnasium and a finely equipped fitness and weight-training facility.
Haunted by previous heartaches - his older brother suffering a gunshot to his face and his homeless father being brutally beaten in the street - Cook’s landlord threatened to evict him and his mother from their apartment, raising the frightening prospect that he may be forced to return to living in his mother’s car. He fell through Burke’s safety net as his grades tumbled, and by November he joined scores of other Boston school students who had been stripped of their academic eligibility to play interscholastic sports.
In a city where high school sports can save vulnerable teenagers from dangerous streets, Cook found himself on the sideline with the many who for various reasons failed to perform as well in the classroom as they do in the athletic arena. This crisis in academic eligibility, by itself, forced several teams to shut down for lack of players, stripped many teams of their best athletes, and underscored the city’s reputation among recruiters as a virtual wasteland for college prospects.
The loss of students to poor grades and various other hardships - many need to help support their impoverished families - has all but ended the days of competitive tryouts for teams. Now, coaches scramble to find enough students to field a team, competitive or otherwise.
“It’s the same struggle everywhere,’’ said West Roxbury track coach Hugh Galligan. “Talk to anybody across the city, and they’ll tell you the biggest challenge is getting kids to come out and keeping them eligible.’’
Athletic director Ken Still shut down eight programs this year for lack of players, up from four the previous year. Among the casualties:
The Charlestown football team lost nearly 10 players, including its starting offensive line, to poor grades. The girls’ basketball team did not field a junior varsity squad for the first time in years. The Burke indoor track team lost 10 athletes to grades, the football team at least six. The school’s volleyball team went to the playoffs with only one reserve on the bench. The South Boston hockey team forfeited a city playoff game because the coach wanted to send a message to players who had squandered their eligibility during the season. The Brighton boys basketball team lost its two big men to academics.
The roll of lost opportunities goes on and on.
“I see talent in this building that you would probably never find elsewhere,’’ said Charlestown track coach Kristyn Hughes. “The trick is trying to coax it out of them, trying to get them to believe in themselves, and trying to get them eligible.’’
‘Feeling of helplessness’
Cook’s downfall was particularly stunning because he had posted one of the highest SAT scores (1,660 out of 2,400) in his senior class. Witty and engaging, and with a gift for music production, he was preparing his college applications when he began to buckle under his family-related stress. With his brother jobless after being badly injured in a gang-related shooting and his mother unable to make ends meet despite working two jobs, Cook scrambled to find a job after school and football practice. He found nothing, even at several fast-food restaurants.
“That’s when everything started to hit me and my grades starting falling,’’ he said.
In a panic, he said, he enlisted in the Marines.
“I signed up out of a feeling of helplessness that plagues so many youths in the city,’’ Cook said. “I did it without really consulting anybody, out of fear of what they would say.’’
His football coach, John Rice, said he was unaware of Cook’s plunging grades or his enlistment.
“Brandon was the best kid in our school and one of the most intelligent,’’ Rice said. “I said, ‘Brandon, we’re in two wars right now. Why are you signing up for the Marines?’ He told me more people die in Roxbury than in Iraq.’’
With Rice’s help, Cook has tried to rescind his enlistment. But nothing could be done about his grade point average, which slipped below the minimum (1.67, or C-minus) required by the Boston Public Schools to compete in athletics. When report cards were issued in mid-November, Cook’s GPA was 1.43. He missed the final games of the football season, including the Thanksgiving game, and his senior basketball season.
“Part of me wanted to hide and cry,’’ he said.
Boston School Superintendent Carol R. Johnson said she is exploring and planning to attack the eligibility problem by requiring all student-athletes to attend regular study halls.
“It’s all about helping scholar-athletes achieve their goals,’’ she said.
Cook managed to regain his eligibility to compete on the spring track team. He was accepted at the Art Institute of Boston and hopes to attend if he can work out the finances.
Extra burden on needy
But struggles like Cook’s are far from uncommon at schools such as the Burke, where only 40.2 percent of the students graduated in four years and 42.1 percent dropped out, according to a 2008 BPS report. Citywide that year, only 59.9 percent of Boston’s students graduated in four years and 21.5 dropped out.
Some coaches say the school system is partly to blame for the problem.
“Some kids are legitimately struggling in some of these courses,’’ said South Boston football coach Sean Guthrie, who teaches math at the school. “But a kid can fail Algebra 1 and they will still put him in geometry. He can fail geometry and they will still put him in advanced algebra. He can fail advanced algebra, and they will still put him in precalculus, because if they held back as many kids that needed to be held back, there would be a logjam.’’
Juan Figueroa, the boys basketball coach at O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, said he struggles to field teams in part because so few African-Americans pass the school’s entry exam. Only 17 black males were invited to attend O’Bryant next fall from the 18 middle schools with basketball programs, he said, and not a single black male was invited from nine of the schools, including two of the largest: the Curley School in Jamaica Plain and Orchard Gardens in Roxbury.
“The city and the schools are failing when those schools cannot send us even one black male,’’ Figueroa said.
Still, in a city where nearly 75 percent of the students are classified as low income, with thousands living in single-parent homes, some of the success stories are remarkable. And, for those students, athletics is often a key part of the picture.
Jean Raphael, a junior running back and track star for Hyde Park High School, has not seen his mother since he left Haiti for America when he was 7. He has since lived in New York, Florida, California, and Massachusetts with relatives or his father’s acquaintances. He lived briefly with his father in Boston until his father evicted him last fall during the football season. He has since lived with his father’s ex-girlfriend in Roslindale.
Raphael, like Cook, has no criminal history and credits sports with helping to keep him in school. In his backpack, he carries recruiting letters from Sacred Heart University and Springfield College. But Raphael has also had his ups and downs academically as external pressures buffet him.
He was leading Hyde Park to an undefeated season in the South Division of the Boston City League in May when the woman he lives with told him to find a job. While he looked for work, competed in track, and tried to keep pace in school, he flunked chemistry and lost his eligibility to finish the track season.
“I never flunked anything before,’’ Raphael said. “Raising myself all these years finally caught up with me.’’
Personal touches
A number of coaches make special efforts to keep their players eligible. In Hyde Park, football coach Adilson Cardoso needed to send about 300 letters and make 150 phone calls to recruit enough athletes to field a team this year; he ended the season with 20 players in uniform. He provided tutoring for his players, many of them Haitian immigrants, and the incentive of a weekly Italian dinner for those who maintained their eligibility and regularly attended practice.
Charlestown boys basketball coach Edson Cardoso is sending all nine of his seniors to college next fall in part because he roused some of them on school days with wake-up calls and transported a number of them to school from their homes across the city. He also sacrificed practice time for two-hour daily study halls, checked weekly progress reports, and required tutoring for struggling students.
“We have a lot of at-risk kids,’’ Cardoso said. “It’s not easy in the inner city to make it out. We try to do whatever we can to help them survive.’’
Bob Hohler can be reached at hohler@globe.com.
Competing under fire
FAILING OUR ATHLETES > PART 2
Competing under fire
Deadly violence often part of life for young athletes
By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff | June 22, 2009
Gunshots rang out - at least six rounds in rapid fire - as girls played softball last month at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, just blocks from Boston police headquarters. Only a few girls flinched at the gunfire, and none ducked for cover as a pack of youths sprinted from the shooting site amid the scream of sirens and screech of tires from approaching police vehicles.
For student-athletes across the city, the chilling cacophony of violence has become part of the soundtrack of their lives.
“It’s something we hear every day,’’ said Madison Park baseball catcher Jeffrey Santana. “Sometimes we don’t even notice it.’’
Like never before, the challenges of staying alive and staying out of jail have become as crucial for athletes in the Boston schools as honing their sports skills, according to coaches, players, and youth advocates. It’s a disturbing reality that complicates efforts to develop a comprehensive high school athletic system in a city that, a Globe review shows, shortchanges its student-athletes on funding, facilities, equipment, coaching, and other services.
Two days before Thanksgiving, Charlestown High’s senior shortstop Sergio Ibanez, 18, was shot dead outside his grandmother’s house. Less than six months later, Soheil Turner, 15, who planned to play basketball next season at Charlestown, was killed waiting for a school bus. Numerous other student-athletes told the Globe they have been robbed or assaulted going to or from school, games, or practice.
“When they leave us at 6 o’clock, we don’t know if we will see them the next morning,’’ said Ibanez’s coach, George Farro.
‘Snitches get stitches’
Fifteen teenagers, most Boston school students, were killed this school year in the city. Boston school police logged more than 740 crimes against individuals and seized more than 625 weapons, including three firearms, reinforcing the fear among many coaches that one of their athletes could be the next to die.
“We’ve been to more funerals than graduations,’’ Madison Park football coach Roosevelt Robinson said of himself and Dennis Wilson, the basketball coach.
It was a gun crime at Madison Park that led Ibanez to Charlestown. A mild-mannered church keyboardist, Ibanez was walking to Madison Park’s music school two years ago when a gun-wielding gang stole his cellphone and the $3 in his pocket. Police arrested one suspect, and Ibanez’s parents, Jean and Ignacio Diaz, feared their son would be exposed to retaliatory violence.
“The boy who robbed Sergio knew who he was, so we needed to get him out of that school,’’ Jean Diaz said.
Rules of the street required they fear for the victim’s safety, as Madison Park basketball player Andre Mascoll reminded his mother after a gang jumped him in January, returning home from practice. Just days after a student survived a shooting outside Madison Park, Mascoll - two blocks from his Dorchester home - was confronted by thugs. One grabbed his arm, another reached in his pocket and stole the $12 his mother gave him, another punched him in the face.
“That’s when I went down, and they all started kicking me,’’ Mascoll said.
He suffered lacerations and bruises. Yet Wilson expressed relief when he heard the news.
“Andre was alive,’’ said Wilson, mindful that one of his ex-players was killed for a gold chain.
Mascoll’s mother urged her son to call police, but he warned her, “Snitches get stitches.’’
Which is why Ibanez transferred from Madison Park to Charlestown. A versatile athlete, Ibanez played two years of baseball at Charlestown and one year of hockey. He also scored high enough on MCAS tests to earn an Adams Scholarship, a four-year scholarship to any public college in Massachusetts.
Ibanez had no criminal or school disciplinary record. Though he lived across from the gang-beset Bromley-Heath complex in Jamaica Plain, no evidence linked him to gangs. But he made a fatal mistake late Nov. 24, responding to a plea from his cousin, William (Chino) Santos, to pick him up at their grandmother’s Roslindale apartment.
“If I knew it was [Santos], I would have told Sergio, ‘Don’t do it,’ ’’ his mother said.
Santos, she said, is a former convict who runs with the notorious Latin Kings. A little after 1 a.m., just after Santos slipped into the back of Ibanez’s girl-friend’s car - Ibanez sat in the passenger’s seat - a gunman approached, by all accounts intending to kill Santos. Instead, he wounded Santos and killed Ibanez. The crime remains unsolved.
For Farro, the news was chillingly familiar. In 2005, one of his football players, Kevin Walsh, 16,was stabbed to death in Charlestown’s Bunker Hill projects.
Fear of gang violence
Gang-related gun crimes are prevalent near many Boston schools and sports facilities. Police Superintendent Paul Joyce said gangs are recruiting children as young as 12 to wield guns.
“We’re coaching a lot of kids who have been traumatized by the violence,’’ said Paulo De Barros, the boys soccer coach at Burke High School in Dorchester.
Many student-athletes in Boston grew up with gang members. Some are gang-affiliated for their own safety. Others try making it on their own, sometimes walking blocks out of their way to avoid gang-controlled turf.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re not a troublemaker,’’ said Johan Rosario, a senior baseball player at Burke who was attacked by a gang on his way home. “If you’re wearing certain colors, or they don’t like the way you look, they’re coming after you.’’
The fear of gang violence was so high when Madison Park played O’Bryant for the city boys basketball title in February that police dispatched a mobile command center and dozens of officers to the game.
With several officers monitoring metal detectors and many others stationed throughout the gym - a number of youths were denied entry or escorted out - Madison Park won the championship without an off-court incident.
For many coaches, saving children from the streets involves trying to keep them out of criminal trouble. Burke baseball coach Paul Duhaime said he refrained from reporting one student who told him he kept a gun, hidden outside school, for his protection. Duhaime said he visited two other players in jail. At Dorchester High, baseball coach Ed Toto was trying to help three players this spring who had criminal histories.
In Charlestown, basketball coach Edson Cardoso cut two players caught carrying knives or box cutters into school, and he struggled to save several younger players with criminal records from further trouble.
“With some kids, honestly, I’ve dealt more with their probation officers and judges than I have with their teachers or guidance counselors,’’ Cardoso said.
South Boston football coach Sean Guthrie went to the playoffs last fall without his best linebacker, Sir Warrior Greene, who was locked up late in the season on an armed robbery charge and probation violation.
One of the lucky ones
Dorchester basketball star Darius Carter was more fortunate. He was nearly expelled as a freshman, was later wounded in a drive-by shooting, and then locked up for three months in a youth detention center for gang-related activity. He appeared on track to follow his older brother, who has spent most of his adult life behind bars. But as a junior at Dorchester’s TechBoston Academy, Carter repudiated the gang life, and as a senior he became the leading boys scorer in Eastern Massachusetts.
“I realized I didn’t want to die,’’ he said. “I wanted to go to college, so I started focusing on school and left the streets alone.’’
With his coaches, John Evans and Justin Desai, as mentors, Carter became one of his school’s best students and most popular leaders, earning him some good will when he needed to clear up his final brush with the law. On Jan. 16, a game day, Carter was excused from school while a jury in Suffolk Superior Court convicted him of aggravated assault as a youthful offender against a teenage rival in 2007.
The same afternoon, Torey Evans, 16, was shot dead in the street a mile from the Dorchester complex and a 15-year-old boy was caught minutes later entering the school with a gun. By the time Carter arrived at the gym from the courthouse, he had missed the first half of Dorchester’s game against O’Bryant. He played the rest of the game, scored 20 points, but Dorchester could not overcome a 26-point halftime deficit and lost, 94-79.
Carter, who received probation for the assault conviction, epitomizes the student-athletes in Boston who find ways to excel despite long odds against them. He plans to attend Brandeis in the fall.
It is teens like Carter, whose love of basketball helped motivate him in school and turn him away from the street life, who are testament to the social and economic benefits of high school athletics in the inner city. As numerous coaches said, it costs much less to educate students than to later incarcerate them.
To help others from losing their way, Wilson enlisted Greg Simpson, a former Madison Park star and NBA prospect, as a volunteer assistant this year. Simpson, 45, is on parole after serving 14 1/2 years for robbing convenience stores at gunpoint to feed his cocaine addiction. He told Wilson’s players how he made it from Bromley-Heath to the threshold of his NBA dream, only to squander it all.
“I worry about these kids because of all the gang violence,’’ said Simpson, who recently joined the Boston Foundation’s StreetSafe outreach team. “It’s very tough to make it in high school sports in this city because of all the obstacles. If you make it, you’ve done something great.’’
Bob Hohler can be reached at hohler@globe.com.
Missed Opportunities
FAILING OUR ATHLETES > PART 1
Missed opportunities
Boston's student-athletes face a sports program in distress
By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff | June 21, 2009
They feel like the forgotten ones: Football teams training on hazardous turf, soccer teams practicing on fields without goals, track teams running in school hallways for lack of access to training facilities.
They are players who share uniforms because there are too few to go around, players who yearn for more qualified coaches on the sidelines and a few fans in the empty stands, players who never make it to the field because of academic woes and the scourge of deadly street violence.
In a golden age of professional sports in Boston, they are portraits of a bleak reality for student-athletes in the city’s public schools.
Consider the baseball players at Burke High School in Dorchester who were forced this spring to practice in an alley strewn with broken glass three days before their season opener because their field - a mile-plus walk from school through one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods - had yet to be prepared. Outfielder Augusto Ceron spoke for many of his fellow athletes when he said of city leaders, “They treat us like second-class citizens. It’s like nobody cares.’’
City leaders point to a few splendid new fields and facilities and offer promises of better days. But as students like Ceron know all too well, Boston’s high school athletic program languishes in chronic distress. A system that could inspire greater achievement on the field and in the classroom while providing a vital alternative to the hazards of the streets is failing because of inadequacies in funding, facilities, equipment, coaching, oversight, and vision, according to a nine-month review by the Globe.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino has trumpeted “the true value of sport’’ for Boston’s youth and frequently appears at neigh borhood sports events. But by many measures, the educational system the mayor oversees has severely shortchanged children in the schools who long for a chance to play, to compete, to succeed.
The first measure of failure is financial. City leaders allocated just under $4 million this year for athletics, less than one-half percent of the total budget of $833 million. That’s far less than the statewide average of 3 to 4 percent, according to the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. The national average is 1 to 3 percent, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
Boston dedicates a smaller percentage of its school budget to athletics than neighboring cities such as Cambridge and Somerville and similarly sized urban centers, including San Francisco and Atlanta. Boston’s athletic budget has not increased in more than six years.
“The inequality is stark,’’ said Stanley Pollack, executive director of the Boston-based Center for Teen Empowerment. “There is a real dearth of athletic opportunities in the city schools, and it contributes to a persistent achievement gap and much higher dropout rates.’’
The second measure is opportunity. Only about 3,000 students participate in Boston’s struggling sports system, as countless others are effectively deprived of the opportunity to play because the programs are not available to them. While 68 percent of students statewide play interscholastic sports, a mere 28 percent participate in the Boston Public Schools, according to an MIAA survey last year.
Scarcer opportunities
It’s not that many Boston students don’t want to play. It’s because, for a host of reasons, they can’t. At Charlestown High School, for instance, girls have the option of playing only five sports all year - volleyball, basketball, softball, and indoor and outdoor track - and they turn out in small numbers to participate. By comparison, girls in neighboring Everett enjoy many more sports options, including field hockey, ice hockey, soccer, tennis, and swimming, and they participate at much higher levels.
In Boston, many sports are delivered in a two-tier system that disenfranchises the 14,000 students who cannot gain entry to the city’s three exam schools: Boston Latin, Latin Academy, and O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science. Only Boston Latin students can compete in sailing and crew. Only students at the two Latin schools can participate in girls’ ice hockey and girls’ varsity soccer.
And though the city claims to offer every athlete access to interscholastic tennis, golf, and cross-country through co-op programs at exam schools, only one of the 14,000 students outside the exam schools - a female tennis player - opted to participate.
Of the 18,000 public high school students in Boston, none have access to the fast-growing sport of lacrosse. Nor can they compete in field hockey or gymnastics, which are offered in neighboring communities.
The situation is even bleaker at Boston’s 22 middle schools. The only interscholastic sports available to those children are basketball and spring track.
Other Globe findings underscore the scope of the problem:
* The city employs only one athletic director to oversee 18 high schools that field teams, and he is chronically overwhelmed. The vast majority of other athletic directors in the state oversee a single high school.
* Boston has just one part-time athletic trainer under contract for all of its schools, which results, coaches say, in some players competing with undiagnosed or inadequately treated injuries.
* The city faces a shortage of qualified coaches, even though its coaching stipends rank among the highest in the state. Boston’s contract with its teachers union also makes it hard to root out lackluster or incompetent coaches because it renders the athletic director powerless to hire and fire coaches.
* The coaching shortage also deprives some student-athletes of proper instruction and increases their risk of injury. Coed track teams with 50 or more athletes, for instance, are led by a single coach, making it impossible for the coach to monitor players competing in track’s multiple disciplines.
* The athletic department’s limited equipment budget has stagnated for years, while the cost of necessities such as football helmets has ballooned. Boston, for example, spends $1,700 a year to equip each high school football team, compared with $4,800 in Lincoln-Sudbury.
* Widespread academic ineligibility contributed to low participation levels in many sports. Five teams with too few players for various reasons were shut down during their seasons, and more than 30 other games were forfeited for reasons ranging from ineligible players to transportation snafus.
* With Boston largely considered a wasteland by college recruiters, only two of the city’s 3,500 graduating seniors - a distance runner at Charlestown and a boys basketball player at English - received full Division 1 college athletic scholarships, though English catcher Nelfi Zapata was the first Massachusetts high school player selected in this year’s Major League Baseball draft, in the 19th round by the New York Mets.
* By comparison, more than 20 students in the smaller Atlanta school district received full athletic scholarships this year.
* Boston is an under-recruited league at every level,’’ said Juan Figueroa, O’Bryant’s boys basketball coach. “The perception, unfortunately, is that kids in Boston can’t qualify academically.’’
* Other than the Charlestown boys winning a Division 2 indoor track title, the Boston schools were so overmatched by suburban opponents that 39 of the city’s 52 teams that qualified for postseason tournaments failed to win a game. (Boston’s baseball and softball teams were outscored in the playoffs, 158-25.)
Pleas for assistance
In a city where school spirit, neighborhood pride in athletics, and a sense of personal security among students have plummeted, it’s no wonder that most of Boston’s best athletes have abandoned the public schools for private and parochial schools, and that others have enrolled in suburban schools through the Metco program, according to many coaches, parents, and advocates.
“I know people want to be optimistic,’’ said Latin football coach John McDonough, “but if you look at the situation and think about whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, I want to say, ‘It’s half-empty. Fill the damn thing, would you?’ ’’
A city whose high school teams once were envied by suburban rivals now fosters a system that inspires little more than pity.
“My heart goes out to those folks,’’ said Nancy O’Neil, the athletic director at Lincoln-Sudbury High School, which competes against Latin in the Dual County League. “There’s no question that across Massachusetts you have the haves and the have-nots, and the Boston schools clearly fall into the category of the have-nots. It’s such a tragedy.’’
Menino said he is committed to improving the city’s high school athletic system.
“Can we do better? We sure can,’’ the mayor said. “It’s a work in progress. We’re making some gains, but the issue is resources. We need to find a way to do more in these difficult financial times.’’
Boston School Superintendent Carol R. Johnson said she is strongly committed to building an athletic system that provides excellence, access, and equity for every student.
“We’re not there yet, but we’re working toward that goal,’’ she said. “Because of the challenges we have with our budget, we have not expanded as rapidly as we would like, but we do consider sports part of our effort to reduce the dropout rate, and we understand how important athletics are in helping students learn about teamwork and sportsmanship.’’
Johnson said she has dedicated a $20,000 donation from Red Sox pitcher Manny Delcarmen, who graduated from West Roxbury High in 2000, to help pay a new administrator to upgrade athletics in middle schools. She said Boston Public Schools athletic director Ken Still is working with Boston University to provide more athletic trainers. The city also has funded six artificial turf fields for Boston schools and built a new gym as part of a $49.5 million project at Burke.
But with a proposed 2.5 percent cut in Boston’s school budget, the prospects of upgrading athletics appear grim. Unlike most communities in the state, Boston does not charge students a user fee to play sports. The fee to play football at Hamilton-Wenham, for example, was $969.
Meanwhile, the state of Boston school athletics is such that maintaining the status quo is viewed as unthinkable by numerous coaches, students, and advocates.
“Things are bad enough already,’’ said Dennis Wilson, the boys basketball coach at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School. “We need to get the word to the bigwig politicians that they need to add to the sports budget. We need more equipment, more resources, more opportunities for students to participate.’’
In Hyde Park, the football team dodges manhole covers on its practice field. In West Roxbury, the football team practices on a field so rutted that players regularly injure ankles. The Brighton team works out on an uneven field so littered with dog feces and goose droppings that players call it “the toilet bowl.’’
In South Boston, football coach Sean Guthrie turned away nearly 20 players because he lacked enough equipment. A shortage of uniforms forced members of Charlestown’s champion track team to swap sweat-soaked jerseys during meets. Guthrie and other coaches scavenged for equipment and reached into their pockets for thousands of dollars to outfit their teams.
Stranded on the sidelines were scores of students who hanker to compete in lacrosse, field hockey, tennis, golf, cross-country, and gymnastics but have little or no chance to pursue them in the Boston schools.
“You need to offer these activities if you want keep kids engaged in the classroom,’’ said Matt Knapp, who persuaded administrators to let him launch a wrestling program last winter at Burke. “A lot of kids are quitting the Boston schools because the schools offer nothing to them.’’
Alternative to crime
The need for a vibrant high school athletic system has never been greater, according to administrators, coaches, and advocates who said experience has shown that students who participate in sports are more likely to stay out of trouble and achieve better grades.
“When I step on the field, it’s the one place where I don’t think about all the craziness,’’ said Alex Munoz, a Dorchester High baseball player. For him, the “craziness’’ is this: a lender threatening to foreclose on his mother’s home, a personal dilemma involving his girlfriend, the shooting deaths of several friends, the escalating gang violence in his Roxbury neighborhood.
Many student-athletes in Boston this year were victims of crimes, from assault and armed robbery to murder. Others were perpetrators.
“The way things are going, probation and parole officers are the new guidance counselors,’’ said Guthrie, who teaches math at South Boston’s Monument High.
Numerous students said that, but for sports, they might well have succumbed to the lure of the streets. Boston Police Superintendent Paul Joyce, who helped secure wrestling mats for the Burke team and volunteered as an assistant coach for the Charlestown boys basketball team, said high school sports are crucial in the fight against crime, particularly gang violence.
“There’s nothing easy about playing sports in the city schools,’’ Joyce said. “There’s a lot these kids have to endure, but we’ve found that sports can help them gain the confidence and self-esteem they need to say no to picking up a gun.’’
Boston’s struggle to sustain competitive athletic programs is also made more difficult by the city’s surge of immigrant students who have never been exposed to numerous sports, most notably football and hockey. Coaches in those sports routinely struggle to recruit enough athletes to field teams.
The challenge is particularly acute at Burke, which has a large number of Cape Verdean immigrants; Hyde Park, which enrolls an abundance of newcomers from Haiti; and Madison Park, where English is a second language for 51 percent of the students. Coaches often rely on bilingual players to translate their instructions.
“The nationalities of our players go from A to Z,’’ said Madison Park football coach Roosevelt Robinson. “When I ask everybody who is American to stand up, nobody does.’’
Shortcomings in the system are less extreme at the exam schools, particularly Latin, which enjoys most of the privileges of its suburban counterparts thanks to generous financial support from alumni. But coaches and students in the non-exam schools consider the disparity between Latin’s programs and theirs a form of de facto discrimination.
“The city treats the big three exam schools like real schools,’’ Robinson said. “They get special privileges. It’s a shame the rest of the schools aren’t treated that way.’’
Latin’s McDonough could do little more than express sympathy.
“I know what some of my peers have to deal with to make ends meet,’’ he said. “It’s extremely difficult for them. I wish it could be better. Unfortunately, it’s not right now.’’
Bob Hohler can be reached at hohler@globe.com.
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