Poor Kids Need A Sporting Chance

By Ron Stodghill II/Chicago

While suburban and small-town parents often worry about their kids being overscheduled with sports and not having enough free time, many inner-city families say they would love to have such problems. When kids pour out of school each day in scores of lower-income urban communities, all that awaits them is the street--no soccer, baseball or ice skating. They just hang out, while their parents pray that dead-end afternoons won't lead to sex or drugs or violence. "Most teenage pregnancies happen between 2 and 5 in the afternoon," says Les Franklin, founder of the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth, a nonprofit group based in Denver that provides counseling and other services for urban youngsters. "In our neighborhoods, the concept of 'soccer mom' doesn't exist."

Millions of less fortunate families bemoan the scarcity of such basic resources as recreation centers with a staff or basketball hoops with nets on them. In many of their neighborhoods, public money for after-school activities has declined, even in a time of plenty. Instead governments are directing resources toward law enforcement, education and other means of curbing such social ills as teen pregnancy, drug abuse and gang violence.

The result is that many traditional extracurricular activities, from basketball leagues to math clubs and choirs, have all but disappeared from inner-city schools. "If you're a child growing up in a poor community, your chances of being involved in an after-school activity are almost none," says Geoffrey Canada, president of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families in New York City.

Consider the contrast between two suburbs of St. Louis. In upscale Clayton, Mo., the after-school menu is crowded with leagues and summer-camp activities ranging from baseball and martial arts to tennis and volleyball. But travel 15 minutes northwest to Clayton's working-class neighbor, the town of Jennings. There the recreation department is understaffed, lacks a gymnasium and relies largely on local public schools and other facilities, creating transportation problems that keep many kids sidelined. "There are some definite barriers," says Cindy Tharp, director of recreation in Jennings. "But if parents want to get their child involved, they'll find a way to do it."

Happily, some of them are getting help. Three years ago, when the U.S. National Park Service was ready to tear down an aging ice-hockey rink in a lower-income section of southeastern Washington, D.C., some parents from more affluent communities banded together and raised enough private and corporate dollars to save it. Today Fort Dupont Ice Arena provides free skating instruction to some 2,500 local kids, with its $500,000 annual budget funded through admission fees, fund raisers and sale of ice time for practicing hockey teams from private schools and local colleges. Says rink general manager Fred Wilson: "The greatest reward we get is seeing the expression on the faces of these kids when they step out on the ice for the first time." It's a step that no child or parent should take for granted.

--By Ron Stodghill II/Chicago