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.