Don Siegel
While most people familiar with Project Coach know that sports are
an important part of what we do, few know that we like to think of ourselves
first, and foremost, as a youth development program. In a nutshell, this means
that our core goal is to use sports as a means to promote youth development,
not as an end in themself
. The idea is that when leveraged properly kids can
acquire a whole
array of valuable life skills, including such things as emotional and attentional control, goal-setting and attainment skills, learning that extended practice is necessary to become good at something, developing an appreciation for and the capacity to be a valued team member, when and how to show initiative, and how to communicate effectively in various situations.
Project Coach also is a laboratory for undergraduates and graduate students interested in becoming teachers of urban youth or involved in public
policy issues that impact the lives of underserved kids. As a laboratory, we also are
very interested in learning from others, and actively seek out and study the strengths and
weaknesses of other programs having a similar mission. One such organization
that we have watched and admired over the years is
the National Urban Squash and Educational Association (
NUSEA).
NUSEA is the umbrella organization for programs that embrace the
sport of squash as a core activity, and like Project Coach, use sport as the
medium through which to engage and connect with youth in order to empower them
as they acquire a whole array of powerful assets that can promote success in
other contexts such as school. Seventeen NUSEA programs operate in the
United States, and four more recently became international affiliates. In aggregate, NUSEA
Programs enroll around 2000 kids, ranging from those in elementary school to adolescents attending college. To
become an affiliate, programs must enroll children from schools that have a student
body of which at least 70% is eligible for free lunch.
Two thousand kids enrolled in 21 programs does not seem like a lot
(approximately 95 kids in a program), and could lead some to be critical of
NUSEA’s reach, but on closer inspection one can see that to do the sorts of
things that they are doing, small numbers are necessary. To be a NUSEA member
a program needs to sign on to operating at least five days a week during the
school year, with participants attending sessions at least three of these days.
Sessions, which run about three hours in duration, blend squash with academic
enrichment activities that are closely tied to a child’s schoolwork. They also
run weekend practices or tournaments on at least half of the school-year
weekends. During the summers, NUSEA also requires that at least 80% of
participants attend at least 20+ days of programming. All participants must
also do at least 10 hours of community service and/or health and wellness
programming each year. Affiliates must also provide college and alumni support
for participants up to the age of 24.
What is the impact of this in-depth, small-scale approach? Looking
at NUSEA’s flagship program, Boston based SquashBusters, one can not help but
be impressed. Out of the 84 of 86 kids who completed the multi-year program
between 2003-2014, 86% went on to a four year college, and 14% matriculated at
a two year college. In contrast, only 39% of kids in the Boston Public School
System fared as well. Additionally, 78% of the SquashBuster cohort that graduated
from high school between 2003-2010 and enrolled in college earned a degree. Ninety-five percent graduated from
a four-year college, and 5% graduated from a two-year college. Comparable
Boston Public School data showed that twenty-five percent of high-school
graduates went on to graduate from college.
While I am not certain that other affiliates can show such
impressive results, or that the data can not be criticized for the
self-selection effects that could account for “skimming” the most able kids
from the demographic served by NUSEA Programs, I remain thoroughly impressed by
how the activities in which kids engage relate to, and appear to be causal in,
producing such outcomes. What is evident to me is that programs such as
SquashBusters enroll kids who meet the criteria of being underserved, and whose
families struggle financially, and in many other ways. Yet, these kids are, or
become motivated, to work hard and embrace all the “wrap-around” activities
that are offered. The sheer number of hours during which kids engage in squash,
academics, character education, community service, travel, and college
preparation during the school year and during its extensive summer programs rivals the
number of hours that they are in school, and clearly becomes an important part
of their lives.
This extensive array of activities in which kids engage and the
depth to which they do it is the “magic sauce”. Essentially, this is what Greg Zaff, founder of SquashBusters, in 1995,
conveyed to me in 2003 when he was in the midst of completing his world class
squash facility on the campus of Northeastern University. He acknowledged that
some would be critical of how small scale his program was when he started (24
kids), but he believed that to get the kids that he was working with to stay
“on the rails” and get to and through college, they needed to be thoroghly
engaged, and exposed to all the things that their more advantaged peers
experienced as they moved from childhood to adolescents, and from adolescents
to adulthood.
In his recent speech at NUSEA’s
annual dinner, honoring him and SquashBuster’s twentieth anniversary, Greg attributed
the success of his program to a very simple theme that came from a quote
written on the board in a class that he took on health policy. It stated
that “All disease results from an absense of love.” While at first blush this
may seem like one of those lines that people agree with without much thought
about how love and health are intertwined. But, I think that Greg’s interpretation
of this relationship is more nuanced and complex. Physical health may be an
important part of this, but in hearing the rest of his talk, he was really
thinking about the American Dream, equal opportunity, and the belief that all
kids, irrespective of where they start, and how many obstacles they may face as they grow up,
can thrive. "Health" is a place holder for thriving. The “love”
part goes beyond the love that a parent gives to a child, and encompasses that
which a community gives to it’s children. What Greg envisioned was the squash
community, which includes current, and former players, as well as others who
have an interest in the sport, providing the human and financial resources to
embrace a group of underserved kids, and to provide them with “whatever it
takes” for them to compete in a world that, for the most part, have left them behind.
Greg conveyed that when he first started out he wasn’t certain how to do this,
but like a parent who learns what his child needs as she grows, he
experimented and, with the help of the squash community, added activities and
experiences for the kids that would help them to thrive. In talking with Greg a few years ago, well after SquashBusters had become one of the model program
in NUSEA, he reiterated that he still did not have a complex “theory of
change”, but increasingly ascribed to the idea that different kids needed
different things at different times in their lives, and that programs such as
his should do their best to help them to get what they need, whatever these things may
be.
What Project Coach has learned from programs
like SquashBusters and people like Greg, is that the “magic sauce” of model
youth development programs is simple to conceptualize, but time and resource
intensive. Like most things that are worthwhile, it entails lots of “practice
and work” in some core activity, such as a sport or artistic endeavor, which allows
a community of peers, teachers, coaches, and supporters to build scaffolding
around each participant to give him or her what he or she needs in
transitioning from childhood to adulthood. As Greg and his colleagues have
often stated, their programs are not really about developing elite squash
players, just as Project Coach is not about developing professional coaches.
They are about engaging kids, connecting them to a supportive community, and
empowering them to compete with their more priviledged peers in other contexts
that will critically impact their futures, such as school.
We at Project Coach are greatful to Greg, as
is NUSEA, for helping us all better understand what youth development work is
about. In essence, it is not all that complicated, as he shows us that
communities need to love (embrace) their youth and provide them with the things
that they need in order to thrive. To paraphrase coaching legend Vince
Lombardi, we know how to make this happen, but the question becomes whether or
not we have the will to do so? As we learn from Greg, and folks like him,
they are “forces of nature” who have shown us how one person’s vision and
tenacity can make a difference in the lives of so many struggling kids who
start out with little chance of competing in a world increasingly favoring
those born into the right circumstances. Yet, SquashBuster kids are beating the odds by a large margin. Just take a look at what his kids think about him and the program that he started 20 years ago.
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