“Take a Chance on Youth, Open the Door of Hope”
Posted: March 24th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Essays | No Comments »Coach Kevin Broadus
“TAKE A CHANCE ON YOUTH, OPEN THE DOOR OF HOPE”
An Essay on Coaching our Youth
My name is Kevin Broadus. I am a college basketball coach. My mother Shirley died when I was eight (8) years old of an unexpected brain aneurysm. I was fortunate enough to be raised by my extended family, my aunt and uncle and my mother’s sister, who provided me a loving home. I attended Catholic schools from the 1st through the 8th grade. I then attended the D.C. public schools for 2 years. My last 2 years of high school were spent in the great Montgomery County school system. In other words, I have personally seen all aspects of primary and secondary schooling.
I was one of the fortunate inner city kids who lived in the North East section of Washington, D.C. Though I never resided with him, my father was a significant presence in both my upbringing and my life. He taught me the value of hard work. My whole family kept me on the straight and narrow. If it were not for their unconditional support, help, and love, I may not have attained my Masters of Science Degree in Counseling. I am proud of my family, my work, and my career. I am ever grateful for the support of the many people I have met along the way, including all of the colleges, administrators and coaches I have worked with in the Washington, D.C. area. You all know who you are and I thank you for your unending strength and belief in my talent. Let me also say, and make no mistake about it, that I am proud of the players I recruited as part of my duties as a basketball coach during these many years. I have no regrets about trying to make any of the young men achieve their dreams even though some of them ultimately may have exhibited some flaws along the way. I hope that they view me as a role model – demonstrating that you can have a successful sports career while furthering your education.
I believe that any portion of any decent higher education learning we impart to a young adult, who may have otherwise been left behind in a less fortunate atmosphere, is valuable. We, as individuals, schools, or a country, cannot turn our backs on those young men and woman whose chance in life to be what they wish to be would end early in their life – if it were not for a sports scholarship. No young person should ever be considered too risky to take a chance on, especially because they may be poor, have “borderline” academics, play basketball or other sports, or may not have had the same family upbringing or other opportunities as others – such as the ability to attend a top flight boarding school. We should never give up on our children who have talent, including those with basketball or other athletic skills. Any other viewpoint, in my opinion, is simply wrong.
I have been fortunate over the course of my career to work with many dedicated young men, who would never have been given the opportunity to realize their hopes and dreams, if it were not for the fact that their innate or practiced athletic basketball aptitude made them eligible for scholarship assistance. For some, achieving a grade point average in college above 2.0 was easy. For others, the academic side of college was a challenge. And for still others, youth and bad judgment sometimes brought them other problems – even those involving the law. But none of these problems are created solely because of sports or the people involved in sports. Nor should we ever assume that because a poor young person has an athletic basketball skill – and now is the time to sit the elephant in the room
– and who is viewed by some people as a minority out of a ‘ghetto’ environment with all the insidious implications that term has– that he or she should not be given a chance. In fact, if it were not for some young men’s ability to play sports, things might be worse for them. We only have to look at the incarceration rates of young black men in prison to understand the problem. Sometimes a person’s only image that keeps them believing in themselves and the chance to advance in life is the fact that they have an athletic gift.
Some people posture, say we should leave these young college aged players where they are – unable to ever have an opportunity to realize their dreams all while experiencing additional education. You cannot merely blame college sports for the issues that were many years in the making involving many causes.
Some young people who come through the secondary education pipeline today do not have the support I had from my family. But that does not mean that we should not make the effort with them. Some will fail. But many will succeed who otherwise would have had little opportunity for advancement. For some, their impossible dream will come true because they have an athletic bent. I have read a lot of commentators castigating schools for taking a chance on ‘borderline kids’ in their athletic programs, as if that was a mortal sin. How dare we suggest that ‘borderline kids’ are somehow worth less to invest in? Isn’t that what we are all supposed to do – take a chance on kids?
Many college students get in trouble or have brushes with the law. But to suggest that this is merely the reality only in the world of college basketball coaches is a falsehood. This is a reality today in the criminal justice system: it deals with many young adults with varying ethnicities. This situation is not simply a sports or a basketball problem. It is a society problem. It is a worldwide problem. Any person today I dare say would be lying if he or she did not have a child or know of another young family relative, friend, or child of an acquaintance, who had either been involved in drugs or who he or she were afraid would be involved in drugs. Many people probably know of a family member, friend or child of an acquaintance who has been in trouble with the law. I would guess that some very high placed people in the SUNY system have children who never played basketball but who have experienced drug problems, and that the plight of their own relative has never been exploded in the national media. As coach at SUNY-Binghamton, I drug tested my players more than was required by any rulebook. Yet you cannot be with young adults 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even a former United States Supreme Court Justice admitted to smoking marijuana. We have had Presidents who reportedly had either some type of alcohol addiction or drug dependency at some time in their lives. Someone had faith in them, took a chance, and it panned out for the best. Hindsight is 20/20 they say, but we cannot and should not be so righteous in our moral posturing to only select those young men and woman to try to achieve their dream who we think have better odds to make it in the world.
This philosophy of opportunity is not limited to basketball. There is nothing wrong with trying to give a person with basketball aptitude the prospect to succeed and achieve their dreams or change their situation in life. By your labeling a young person out of high school with the now insidious word ‘borderline’- you are presuming a self-fulfilling failure and sending a message to any one out there not to take a chance on this young sports talent because it may cost you your job or worse your reputation. We should not make such an assumption. Not only does it foreclose a chance to a young talent, it also fosters cowardice at its greatest, selfishness and self-indulgence at its worse. It suggests elitism and maybe even racism to only use young people in a sports program that we believe in advance will be perfect because of their social, economic, educational or other background. Let’s be realistic, we do not recruit basketball players from music class. We do not recruit basketball players from students with a 4.0 grade average who have never played sports. We select basketball players from the pool of young people who play basketball, want to play basketball, and have a talent to play basketball, and as long as they meet a certain minimum standard we try to let them fulfill their goals and dreams.
The perception I fear being flaunted, under the guise of euphemistic words, that basketball is limited to the poor less-educated ghetto kid, is an outrage. I fear the tone and message of what has been put out there is that somehow we as coaches are taking the poor, uneducated, minority kid out of the ghetto because he can play hoops and putting him in a school where he can’t succeed with the other young people. One need only look at the basketball courts in both the pros and the recent college tournaments to understand the perception that race is a component in this discussion. Recently, it has been hinted at that there must be a brotherhood of minority coaches and professors who team up because of their ethnicity and somehow are engaged impermissible conduct – first by recruiting these kids to the school and second by keeping them in the school when they do not belong there. And yet most of the kids I have coached had excellent grade point averages, including at SUNY- Binghamton. One young man who later got into legal trouble on his own time received the Chancellor’s award last year because his grade-point average was about a 3.0 when we won the championship and later appeared at the N.C.A.A. tournament. This fact has been conveniently omitted in the attendant publicity to the detriment of these young players. Fact: no one of the last year’s SUNY- BU winning basketball team was ever academically ineligible as evidenced by the fact that some graduated, and some are still enrolled and matriculating presently at SUNY- Binghamton even though they are not playing basketball. Fact, the grade point average of the winning Binghamton team last year was the highest it had been from prior teams since entering Division 1. Yet somehow, and for some reason, the perception that floated out to the public is different. These young men have lost more than basketball. They have been cumulatively made out to have bad character– ‘thugs’ from bad families, or from ghettos, or who had no business being in college on an athletic scholarship because they came from inadequate educational backgrounds, or even bad seeds that had no business being given a chance. This cumulative classification is simply wrong. If anyone does something illegal he or she must answer to the law. But that is not the issue in the debate. The issue is whether we take a chance on only the select few – or on a specific individual with a select talent. I would give any young man such as these kids a chance over and over to succeed in their life’s dream.
Isn’t it hypocrisy to say we care about our young people only when they don’t embarrass us?
It is an easy way out to suggest that there is something wrong with ‘borderline’ students playing sports. Nor should we assume that their character is completely cemented by the time they are in college. I, as a father of four, believe it is better that we take the chance on our children rather than not even try because we fear what will happen to our own reputation, career or job security. Fear gives us the easy way out. We should not presume who will fail and who will not – even if there is a greater likelihood of failure. We should not destroy the hopes, dream, or potential of some of our youth whose athletic talent may have kept some going through very hard times. Fostering that talent may let them live the life experienced by very few privileged people. And I will continue to take my chances on children who are not Rhodes scholar material, just as my family, my priest, my community, my teacher, my mentors, my school administrators, my coaches, and many others took a chance on me.
There is been much innuendo, gossip, false conclusions and misinformation recently concerning these issues at SUNY- Binghamton. It is my belief that this has caused so much damage to many people including the young men who played basketball whose privacy has been bandied by many people unfairly and unnecessarily under the guise of transparency. In the past, we have always sought to protect the privacy rights of young college students even if they were basketball players. As for me personally, I intend to address these points aggressively as soon as I can, because I too have a family and children that have been greatly affected by this. They supported my move from Georgetown, uprooted themselves, their jobs, their schooling and their secure surroundings, to take a chance with people I did not know in Binghamton with a program no one had ever heard of. I have appreciated the basketball fan based community at SUNY-Binghamton. Most of the townspeople and students have been extremely supportive. Unfortunately, the school has specifically forbidden me from discussing, defending or responding to my specific personnel issues with the press even though the release of a report, and commentary there on, has left my character attacked and my reputation put asunder. So as of now I have not been able to personally address with any media the supposed allegations about me, even though my attorneys have told me there is a major legal issue of whether such a mandate forbidding my speech is constitutional.
But I do owe it to the young men who came to SUNY-Binghamton, some from schools with secure and supported basketball programs, to play at my request because the administration of Binghamton wanted to build a top-flight basketball team. That was achieved. There were no reported problems that were considered abnormal with any student during the first two years I was at SUNY- Binghamton. One only need look at all the photos from last March through June 2009 evidencing massive attendance, support, happiness, and pride of all including the community and the then administration. The basketball players were loved and embraced. So I think it is important to be clear about what I mentioned above, perhaps repeat it again, to set the record straight about the perception in the community about the team and their families. Before the start of the actual basketball season and at the very beginning of the school year after being away for the summer, a couple of players each engaged in a one time improper conduct at the beginning of this school year on two separate back to back days. One incident concerning the theft of condoms and the aftermath of fleeing has been resolved without a criminal record being incurred. Another is apparently still the subject of a law enforcement investigation to determine if any charges will issue. The other player, who won the Chancellor’s Award last May 2009 for academic excellence, has been charged with a serious drug crime in his hometown: far from the school grounds and while he not actively playing on the team. He will still finish the school year this year and graduate. These young men committed these acts on their personal time – not while playing basketball, on the court, or in the presence or with the permission of any member of the athletic department. This was after having matriculated at the school for more than a year with no reported problems. They may have to ultimately deal with these issues with a third party but what has happened is that these basketball players have been made out to be devils incarnate that were immorally recruited into the basketball program because they were of bad character and or questionable academic character. The SUNY sports program has had truly bad people recruited by others into it. You need only to use Google to be aware of them even if you weren’t at SUNY when incidents were brought to light. After I arrived at SUNY- Binghamton, I dismissed a Serbian national who I felt did not belong on the team. Later while I was still coach, but after he was off the team, he crushed someone’s skull and then fled the country. In 2006, the SUNY-Albany football coach had three of his players, all who were reportedly recruited and on scholarship, commit a violent rape while matriculating at the campus though while on their own time.
These young men are not, I repeat – are not – in the above category of the aforementioned violent and depraved evildoers. It has also been wildly overlooked that at least two of these young men came from a families who have a parent or a significant relative who work for either law enforcement or in a job related to our judicial system; and others players who matriculated for several or more semesters with good grade point averages.
I teach my children that a person of true and honest character will put himself or herself in harm’s way to help others in need. I for one will continue to always take a chance on a young person with talent as I have done for years before today, just as others did for me. For to do otherwise, is to forcefully close the door of hope on the aspirations and dreams of our young people merely out of our own selfishness concerning the preservation of our own reputation. The philosophy of opportunity for all, rather than inaction motivated by fear of the consequences of failure, is what has made our country great. I say,
“Take a Chance on Youth, Open the Door of Hope”.
