(Vol. 1, No. 2 - Spring/Summer 1997)

The Sporting Life

Why are hundreds of Louisville's inner-city kids clamoring to join a club that demands they study hard and earn good grades? Ask Robbie Valentine, dude.

By Holly Holland

When people worry about students "falling through the cracks," they're talking about kids like Rocky Newton.

Unruly and unmotivated, Rocky got in trouble so often at two Jefferson County middle schools that he spent most of sixth and seventh grades standing in the hall, sitting at a desk that teachers had separated from other students, or serving time at in-school suspension.

After the first few months of this school year, Rocky's grades were so low that he was on track to repeat the eighth grade at Lassiter Middle School. Then, in one of those amazing adolescent turnarounds that teachers and parents hope for, Rocky decided to get serious about school.

By March, he had made the honor roll. Teachers regularly praised him for his behavior instead of sending him to the office. Rocky's aunt was so impressed with his new maturity that she allowed him to earn spending money caring for her 18-month-old son after school.

When asked what accounted for the sudden changes, Rocky doesn't hesitate to answer.

"I got in Sports Club," he says.

Popular program has little to do with athletics

The Sports Club Education Program began in 1991 with 160 students in four Jefferson County schools. After several years of success as a small program, its organizers agreed to expand to 16 middle schools serving nearly 1,100 students.

The public-private venture is wildly popular. Rocky was one of 40 students chosen to participate when Lassiter joined the network last fall, and each member school now has a waiting list of at least 200 students. The program's $500,000 annual budget comes from the local Gheens Foundation, the Jefferson County Public Schools and the Boy Scouts of America, which promotes the Sports Club concept nationally.

Despite its name, Sports Club has little to do with athletics. Its success stems from the way it builds long-term relationships between adolescents and adults who know how to relate to young teens.
Sports Club follows a common-sense philosophy: Children who trust are much more willing to listen and try. With good behavior and academic improvement, students earn fun time in the gym and rewards such as uniforms and field trips. But more importantly, they gain attention and respect for doing something right.

"Every kid in Jefferson County wants to be part of something," says Robbie Valentine, the former University of Louisville basketball player who has directed the program since it started. "Kids want attention and they want discipline. You pick them up, and you pick them up again and again."

Relying on a cadre of dedicated teachers, parents and former college athletes, Sports Club improves the odds that a student will grab a helping hand. Participants consistently produce better grades, attendance and behavior than control groups. To earn basic incentives, students must have at least a C average, good conduct in all courses and perfect attendance in a grading period. The requirements get tougher for subsequent rewards.

Sherry DeMarsh, who coordinates middle school reform efforts for the district, agrees with Valentine that the Sports Club's success in boosting the achievement of some of JCPS's most troubled students can help convince teachers and parents that underachieving kids can meet higher standards with the right kind of attention and motivation.

"Our focus on high standards fits right into the Sports Club philosophy," says DeMarsh, who serves on the Club board of directors and was an early supporter when she was principal of Iroquois Middle School.

Teachers, older students provide volunteer help

Like all successful after-school programs, the Sports Club relies on strong classroom teacher support. During the school year, teachers submit weekly reports on every kid in the program. The reports determine the subjects that students will focus on during their weekly tutorials, which are supervised by teachers, older students and volunteers.

At 8 a.m. one Saturday in March, Sports Club members at Iroquois Middle School spread their books and notebooks on cafeteria tables. Three seventh-graders work together on a vocabulary lesson.

"Monsoon is a flood. Moccasins are shoes, dude," one student corrects another.

"I'm going to look up monsoon again," the chastized boy says, flipping to the glossary.

At another table, Justin Henderson, a freshman at Doss High School and a former member of the Iroquois Sports Club, helps Lance Davis with his social studies homework.

"All you got to do is memorize the states and capitals," Justin tells Lance, a sixth-grader. "Once you get through looking at them, I'm going to quiz you on that."

Lance promises to buckle down in school. "I started out good, then I started not paying attention in class," he explains. "That's why my grades went down. I'm going to start trying to catch up again."

Language arts teacher Janet Coffey, the Sports Club coordinator at Iroquois, sits at a table on the stage and consults a master list of grades and attendance records for the 180 students in the program. Every few minutes, she calls a new student up for a conference.

"I'm not here for the money," says Coffey, referring to the small and irregular stipends teachers earn for showing up on Saturdays. "I'm here because it makes a difference in my classroom."

Part taskmaster, part counselor

In addition to academic assistance, Sports Club teaches students about good manners, self-respect and the importance of community service. Robbie Valentine is the catalyst, DeMarsh and others say.

With help from four full-time and two part-time assistants -- all former athletes who graduated from college with stellar grades and attendance records -- Valentine walks the halls of the middle schools on a daily basis, diffusing crises, cautioning slackers and preaching about potential. He is part taskmaster and part counselor, dispensing directives as regularly as hugs.

"Hey, you got a belt on today," Valentine says to an Iroquois student who previously favored the trendy droopy drawers look. "Looks good."

"Gee, you look so handsome," he calls to another boy, "but you know how great you'd look with a smile and a better attitude?"

A girl with more energy than height looks up at Valentine's 79 inch-frame and blurts out a question.
"I can't understand that language," he tells her. "Speak slowly and try again. Your IQ is very high."

Paulette Logsdon, a divorced mother who has three children in Lassiter's Sports Club, says Valentine has been an important male role model. Belonging to the group has been especially important for her son, Grant, an eighth-grader with cerebral palsy and severe vision problems.

"Robbie really gives them talks about listening to moms," she says. "I've used that from time to time. When they don't want to do chores at home, I say, 'Well, I guess maybe I need to talk to Mr. Valentine.' That works. They respect him."

Success presents its own challenges

Sports Club is growing, both in Louisville and across the nation. Valentine has advised representatives from 19 other states about setting up similar programs, and schools in six cities have already done so.

Valentine plans to expand Sports Club next fall to two or three other JCPS middle schools and boost enrollment at most others. Eventually, he'd like to extend the program to fifth grade, hoping to help students avoid the drop in student achievement that often accompanies the transition to middle school.

The challenge in scaling up locally, he says, is finding enough time for his staff to regularly visit all the schools and establish the close relationships with students and teachers that make the program work.

Valentine believes the personal touch is critical to persuading educators of the program's effectiveness. Although most schools have strongly supported the Sports Club, he says, a few have not. "When you start a program from an outside source, it takes time for teachers and administrators to find out about us and build that trust." One strong selling point: In six years, not one Sports Club student has been involved in a gang or sent through the criminal justice system.

This past year, Sports Club enrolled the largest number of sixth-graders in its history. That sent the program's suspension rate up and its grade-point average and attendance rate down. Valentine says the statistical dips don't indicate a faltering program but a period of adjustment as new students begin to respond to the Club's higher expectations. Past experience makes him confident that the numbers will improve once the students reach seventh grade.

Even so, Valentine continues to experiment with strategies that can raise student achievement. When he visited schools that serve students from middle and upper-income families, Valentine says, he noticed they usually require students to read silently each day. "How come the lower-income, inner-city kid isn't doing that?" he wondered.

This year, Sports Club began requiring students to read silently during the first 20 minutes of each tutorial session because he was concerned about their weak reading skills. He notes that children who can't read well typically have trouble with all their subjects -- often they just need more practice and support. That's the way it was for young Robbie Valentine before his fifth-grade teacher in Radcliff, Kentucky worked intensively with him during and after school to boost his reading skills.
It all comes back to expectations, Valentine says. When you set higher standards for students and teach them how to reach those goals, they respond.

For Tanya Jones, an eighth-grader at Iroquois Middle School, participating in Sports Club this year has been the difference between being a failure and having a future. Last year, she was flunking every class and getting into fights constantly at school. This year, after getting tutoring, learning conflict resolution skills and regularly turning to Valentine and her teachers for help, Tanya brought her grades up to A's and B's, joined the school's cross-country team, and dramatically improved her behavior.

She sums up the impact of Sports Club succinctly: "It's an education program that helps you do more than you thought you could."

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