Neighborhood Sports Chicago - Home page

New Hoops in the Hood video

12/19/2011, 10:47 AM

Monday, December 19, 2011

For the last several years, Tu Multimedia, through videos and audio slideshows, has been documenting Hoops in the Hood, the summer basketball program that LISC/Chicago supports in communities throughout the city. Here's the latest.....

Historic Gately Stadium Reopens
After Sweeping Renovation

12/19/2011, 11:01 AM

Friday, November 11, 2011

Football players from eight public schools and South Side park districts that share decades-old Gately Stadium in Roseland gathered on Oct. 14 to celebrate a renovation that includes a new synthetic turf field, scoreboard, lighting and seating.

They were joined just before the game between Julian and Michele Clark high schools by parents, educators and representatives of the three organizations that made the renovation possible: the Chicago Bears, the Chicago Public Schools and LISC/Chicago.

The $600,000 renovation includes a new synthetic turf field, scoreboard, lighting and seating.

GORDON WALEK

At the ceremony, Ald. Michelle Harris (8^th) welcomed Chicago Public Schools Chief Jean-Claude Brizard, Bears’ Director of Special Projects Patrick McCaskey, and LISC/Chicago Executive Director Susana Vasquez, explaining how much the new stadium means to the far South Side community.

“The 8^th and 9^th wards could not have undertaken this huge project on our own,” said Harris, who along with Ald. Anthony Beale (9^th) provided the funds for a new scoreboard. “We are immensely grateful to CPS, LISC/Chicago and the Bears for their support. This renovation is a great boost for the hundreds of student athletes – boys and girls alike – whose sports teams or school bands play at Gately.”

Gately has been a vital hub for youth sports and civic team pride, but the field and facilities at 103^rdStreet and Cottage Grove had received no substantial renovation in decades. The recent work was made possible by a unique partnership between the Bears and LISC/Chicago, through the NFL Grassroots Program. That effort has provided $1.35 million – and leveraged a total of $8.3 million — since 1998 to renovate nine fields in communities across Chicago, often in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools or the Chicago Park District.

“We’re deeply honored to have been able to play a role in renovating Gately through our partnership with the Chicago Bears,” said Susana Vasquez of LISC/Chicago. “These fields are tremendous community assets, especially for young people."

LISC/Chicago Program Officer Keri Blackwell (left) and Executive Director Susana Vasquez share smiles with Patrick McCaskey of the Chicago Bears, who donated $200,000 toward the renovation through the NFL Grassroots Program.

GORDON WALEK

The LISC/Chicago – Bears collaboration is the local incarnation of a national partnership between the NFL Grassroots Program and National LISC, which has invested more than $30 million to create or renovate 243 fields in more than 70 cities across the nation.

“The NFL Grassroots Program was created to invest in the communities upon whose support we rely and as a way of encouraging positive and healthy youth development,” McCaskey said. “We base these efforts on the realization that athletics pays real dividends in the lives of young people, in their development, and in the overall unity and vibrancy of their communities.”

The Bears, through the NFL Grassroots Program, donated $200,000 towards the $1.2 million cost of replacing the artificial turf. The aldermen's offices each contributed $5,000 for the new scoreboard. Chicago Public Schools picked up the remainder.

"While I am new to Chicago, I am not new to school sports and the important role they play in the lives of our youth and in the spirit of our schools," said Chicago Public Schools CEO Brizard. "Sports are a great opportunity for students to learn how to work together, show enthusiasm for a shared mission and celebrate accomplishments together.

The marching band at Julian High School takes the field prior to the game between Julian and Michele Clark high schools.

GORDON WALEK

"The generosity of the Bears and LISC make it possible to provide resources for our students that would otherwise be out of reach," he added. "On behalf of the schools and students that now call this renewed stadium 'home,' I extend my most sincere thanks to those who made it possible."

In addition to serving CPS students, the field will also be used for Catholic league games, Jr. Bears and summer leagues. Regular season games began at the renovated Gately Stadium last month and high school football players are already seeing the benefits of the field renovation.

Besides Gately, the LISC/Chicago partnership has supported renovations and improvements at Evanston Township High School; two sites in Jackson Park; LaFollette Park in Chicago’s Austin community, where work is scheduled to be completed in 2012; Lane Tech High School, at the border of the Avondale community; New City; North Park University in North Park; and Orr Academy in Humboldt Park.

From Learn and Earn to Slam and Jam

11/12/2011, 5:47 PM

Friday, November 11, 2011

John McCarron

“There’s no time to get in trouble.”

If the Near North Unity Project needed a motto this summer, Shelby Tharpe surely nailed it.

It was a sticky-hot Friday afternoon and the 13-year-old was conferring with his buddy, Leon Wilbut, near basketball court No. 1 in Seward Park at the corner of Sedgewick and Orleans streets.

Two of the team captains flank Patrick “Shane” Steward, founder and president of Chicago Men in Action, or M.I.A., which runs the basketball league with support from LISC/Chicago and its Near North Unity Project (NNUP).

John McCarron

Shelby goes to Franklin Elementary, which is north of Division Street. Leon goes to Salazar Elementary, south of Division.

Ordinarily that might be a problem. Neither belong to a street gang, but in the brave new world emerging on Chicago’s Near North Side following removal of the Cabrini-Green high-rises, old “affiliation” boundaries have been slower to go away. One side of Division is Vice Lord turf; the other Gangster Disciple country. Wise mothers tell their children not to cross.

Yet here they were, captains respectively of the Celtics and Knicks, two teams in the 12-14 age division of the Bridge the Gap basketball program, talking over ground-rules for their upcoming game.

This pleases Patrick “Shane” Steward, founder and president of Chicago Men in Action, or M.I.A., which runs the basketball league with support from LISC/Chicago and its Near North Unity Project (NNUP).

“Sometimes kids come to me with [team] rosters already made up,” Shane said. “We don’t go for that. We mix ’em up. Kids gotta learn how to get along.”

Referee Johnny Payton tosses a jump ball during a game at Seward Park, which brought together young people from both sides of Division Street in "violation" of gang boundaries.

John McCarron

And get along they do, all summer, every Friday afternoon on the courts behind the Seward Park field house. On the sidelines Shane is in charge, making sure the “shorties” show manners as they line up for free hot dogs and soft drinks; making sure the right teams get the right color tee shirts; making sure the boom box is pulsing and the announcer at the scorer’s table credits players for selfless passes as well as three-point bombs.

“We’re always looking for leaders,” said Shane, nodding toward Shelby and Leon.

Leadership is at a premium in this neighborhood, where hundreds of high-rise families have been uprooted and resettled in townhouses and mid-rises that look like a big improvement … but test a kid’s coping skills every day. Shelby and Leon grew up in the high-rises but now are adjusting to new expectations—and aggravations—of mixed-income housing where old forms of “hangin’ out” are frowned upon.

Monday through Thursday the two are downtown, at Harold Washington College, in the “Learn and Earn” program run by the city and CHA. There they brush up on academic skills, learn about various career paths and best of all, they say, collect a small stipend for six weeks.

But Fridays are best. Fridays they get to slam-and-jam with their homies at Seward Park. There’s no time to get in trouble.

Kids need options
With one weekend to go in the month of July, Chicago police already had recorded 230 murders during 2011, a majority of the victims being minorities in their teens and 20s.

Gangs don't mess around with the aptly named Justice Stamps, director of the Marion Stamps Youth Center.

John McCarron

It is true that FBI-index crimes—murders, assaults, rapes, etc.—have been trending down in recent years, both in Chicago and nationwide. But as the economic non-recovery grinds on, police and community leaders are seeing a new brazenness among gang bangers who can see no other future for themselves.

As of late July Chicago police had shot more than 40 people this year, most of them young and all of them, police say, brandishing a weapon. A total of 25 were shot by police in all of 2010.

“Respect is missing. They are not scared of anything,” said Charles Price, who monitors gang activity for the Local Advisory Council representing public housing tenants in the Near North neighborhood.

Price was among 30 community leaders who huddled July 26 in the community room of the 18^thDistrict police station for a mid-summer reality check on the first few months of the Near North Unity Project. On one matter there was strong consensus: Positive youth activity and personal safety are not only interlocked … they are key to the neighborhood’s success.

“Kids just need options,” said attendee Duwain Bailey, chief of operations for the Chicago Housing Authority. “Not every kid is going to gravitate toward sports. For some it’s music. For others cooking or baking. Or maybe they’d just as soon get a job and work. As an organization, we’ve got to help create those opportunities."

Especially concerned about youth behavior and personal safety were seniors at the conference table.

“My community is everything but safe,” said Willie B. Jones, representing seniors living in CHA apartments on the 1300-block of North Cleveland Avenue. “We don’t feel comfortable walking a square block, not with young gentlemen standing there on the corners by the eights and tens. We feel intimidated. We feel vulnerable. But we need our exercise.”

Youth served first
Much of what was said at the meeting confirmed NNUP organizers’ early decision to start the effort by immediately providing support for summertime youth activities, such as Bridge the Gap basketball.

The drum line prepares to march forth.

John McCarron

Elsewhere in the city, LISC/Chicago has first identified an existing community organization with which to partner as part of NCP; then, a lot of early effort has gone into helping neighbors produce a comprehensive Quality-of-Life plan to guide subsequent activity.

Keri Blackwell, senior program officer for LISC/Chicago, said NNUP does need to identify or create a lead local organization, one that will eventually produce a comprehensive neighborhood plan. But by moving first to support highly visible summer programs, she said, a grassroots constituency is coalescing that can tackle those more detailed chores beginning this fall … after kids go back to school.

“So we’ve got Friday night jazz in Seward Park; we’ve got crews of kids working clean-and-green Saturday mornings; we had about a hundred youths at Community of Peace working on environmental issues; we’ve got the basketball. … It all takes manpower, … and the kind of buy-in that makes people stick around.”

“This is not a science,” seconded Stanley Merriwether, the LISC consultant who coordinated the effort locally. “Different communities have different personalities, different complexities. There’s not a formula that says you do this and then you do that.”

The two handed out forms detailing what LISC looks for in a local partner and asking for names of community groups that might fill the bill. Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) also will have a strong say.

Flag of hope

A Tae Kwan Do demonstration unfolds during halftime of one of the basketball games.

John McCarron

But it was youth problems and solutions that dominated the meeting, and two youngsters from the city’s After School Matters (ASM) program at Seward Park were asked to speak. Jeremy Dossie and Crystal Herron both raved about their daily drum line and flag corps practices at Seward Park … but complained other kids not in the program come by “to make fun and try to start fights.”

Then again, troublemakers don’t come around when Justice Stamps is at the park making sure her ASM campers are on task and not being harassed. She’s director of the Marion Stamps Youth Center, an activity named in memory of her mother, a legendary organizer in the Cabrini-Green area.

“All of my kids graduate high school and plan to go to college,” Stamps said of her Youth Center regulars. Her summer’s big breakthrough, she said, was getting kids living north of Division to come down to Seward Park for ASM camp.

“It’s been a task-and-a-half ” keeping the gang-bangers away, she said, and there have been incidents. “But we’ve seen progress. We’re pulling the teens in because now they know there’s a whole group of people working to keep them safe.”

The Division Street boundary is artificial—but very real in the lives of Cabrini-area young people.

John McCarron

Later that day at the park, during a practice break, instructor Sasha Rashidee, once a flag team member at the University of Illinois, explained what it is that the Near North kids really need.

“They crave personal instruction, personal attention,” she said while untangling the hair of 16-year-old Ikayla Gregory. “So we break it down, make it easy. One, two, three, four on the gok block,” a small red plastic box struck with a drumstick.

Ikayla said she was scared to try out for her high school’s flag team last year. But this fall, after a summer a Seward Park, she may give it a try. “I think I’m good enough now,” she said.

More information: Stanley Merriwether (312) 504-4706 or smerriwether@gmail.com

Hoops in the Hood:
Profile of Volunteer Coach Darren Tillis

11/12/2011, 5:34 PM

Friday, November 11, 2011

Community volunteers are an integral part of all successful neighborhood efforts – including Hoops in the Hood, a partnership of LISC/Chicago and organizations in 11 neighborhoods to offer summer sports programs focused on building youth engagement, leadership and community safety strategies.

In North Lawndale, one of those volunteers is State Farm insurance agent Darren Tillis, who opened his insurance office in North Lawndale in 2001 but brings a commitment to the community that goes back much further. He was born and raised in the neighborhood, and he’s joined with dozens of residents to carry on one of the community’s great traditions of supporting local civic and cultural life. For Tillis, Hoops in the Hood has become a central part of that volunteerism.

Neighborhood volunteers like North Lawndale coach and State Farm agent Darren Tillis are the backbone of Hoops in the Hood efforts to foster youth engagement and community safety.

GORDON WALEK

“Since I was 11, basketball has played a major role in my social and academic development,” says Tillis. “I grew up on a block where my childhood role model was Mickey Johnson, a professional NBA basketball player who lived down the street. He encouraged us to get involved in athletics while also stressing the importance of academics, and my parents always stressed that my academic performance dictated my participation.

"Today, 30 years later, I still maintain relationships with people I met playing team basketball as a kid – and I still hold on to those life lessons and do my best to pass them along.”

When Tillis found out that LISC/Chicago and State Farm Insurance had partnered to bring the Hoops in the Hood program to North Lawndale, he jumped at the chance to work with the staff at Lawndale Christian Development Corporation (LISC’s lead agency in the community). Today, he coaches one of the teams playing in LCDC’s Hoops program.

“I attribute my life today to the lessons, skills and mentoring I got participating in youth basketball,” says Tillis. “As a coach, it’s my hope that we can provide our youth with the same kind of experience. Hoops is an opportunity for kids to develop socially by interacting with business professionals and positive role models through a shared value – sportsmanship.”

Darren’s experience with youth athletic programs and his work with Hoops help him see first-hand how community involvement can have a lasting effect on participants and how they view their community.

“Young people begin to understand community-building and their role in helping the community move forward,” he says. “The youth feel safe and become advocates for keeping their communities safe. In 20 years, today’s participants can look back on Hoops in the Hood and the positive effect it had on their personal and professional development – and as our future community, business and political leaders, pass those positive insights and experiences onto the next generation.

“Young people begin to understand community-building and their role in helping the community move forward,” Tillis says. “The youth feel safe and become advocates for keeping their communities safe."

GORDON WALEK

"Leaders across the world attribute their problem-solving skills, conflict resolution skills, community building skills and leadership qualities to their involvement in sports," Tillis adds. "These are the same qualities that children learn by participating in programs like Hoops in the Hood.”

But Tillis’s neighborhood involvement extends beyond sports. The Illinois State University alumnus serves on the boards of North Lawndale Neighborhood Housing Services and the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative facilitated by the Better Boys Foundation. He also offers college readiness talks to young people at North Lawndale’s Chicago Youth Center.

Tillis will be among the speakers at LISC/Chicago’s Hoops in the Hood cross-city tournament on Sept. 10 sponsored by State Farm, where he’ll be cheering for the team he coaches as well as promoting the broader initiative, including the many interlocking programs and community groups that inform the larger initiative.

“This program and the dozens of community projects that make it possible give the whole community – not just in North Lawndale but in all Hoops communities – a chance to come together,” he says. “’Hoops puts families and whole blocks on the streets in a positive, shared experience of teen endeavor. It gives everyone a tremendously constructive experience of what it means to be a community. And it helps kids and adults see that ‘community’ is bigger than one block or one neighborhood – it’s as big as the whole city, and by extension, the whole world.

"That’s a lesson to carry forward well beyond the end of the summer Hoops season – that’s a lesson for life.”

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of Working Capital, LISC/Chicago's quarterly e-newsletter.

Neighborhood Sports Chicago

3/20/2009, 4:16 PM

Friday, February 27, 2009

Neighborhood Sports Chicago (NSC) is a consortium of community-based organizations that offer athletic programs for children and young adults in underserved neighborhoods in Chicago. NSC programs combine sports, leadership development, art and health awareness all while promoting civic engagement and community building. NSC member organizations have a demonstrated track record of successful program implementation and coordination among residents and community groups.

NSC activities include four main components: sports programs; peer-learning and technical assistance; communications and technology; and administration.

During the spring and summer of 2009, NSC partners will implement Spring Into Sports (SIS), a week-long series from April 4 to 11, and “Chicago Co-Motion,” a summer-long calendar of coordinated sports programming.

1. Programs

Each of the communities participating in Neighborhood Sports Chicago designs and implements programs in a unique way that meets the needs and reflects the character of each participating neighborhood.

Sports programs include seasonal and year-round leagues ranging from street basketball to community-wide cycling programs; baseball leagues to outdoor aerobics; boxing clubs to school-based running programs. NSC members also facilitate cross-community initiatives such as the Hoops-in-the-Hood Cross City Final and Sunday Parkways.
Program enhancements range from youth internship opportunities to health awareness campaigns; mentoring and leadership development; to open space initiatives and equipment exchanges and lessons.

2. Technical assistance and peer networking opportunities

This may include how-to workshops facilitated by neighborhood experts, program manuals and one-on-one technical assistance provided by consultants.

3. Communications and technology elements

This includes promotional and information-sharing materials including publications, special-interest stories, web-based tools and audio-slideshows.

4. Administration

Covers program management, venue coordination, facilitation of cross-city tournaments, and coordination among government agencies and partner organizations.

Growth Plan

Neighborhood Sports Chicago expects to continue operations beyond 2009. It will:

Introduce new athletic programs, including sports for youth with special needs, and support growth of NSC into new communities.
Develop an NSC website to promote inter-league communication, recruit coaches and sponsors, register players, promote events and provide league records.
Establish an NSC endowment to provide sustainable funding for operations.
Facilitate cross-city tournaments for multiple sports.
Offer professional development opportunities for coaches.
Develop an academic component to expose players to sports medicine, athletic training, sports architecture, facility design and planning, etc.

Neighborhood Sports Chicago is an outgrowth of LISC/Chicago's New Communities Program, which has invested heavily in youth programming over the past seven years.

Find videos and photo slideshows here

4/13/2009, 9:18 AM

We've assembled all the photo slideshows and videos in this category so you can find them easily. There's basketball, volleyball, rowing, double dutch, archery, swimming and plenty more from all four of the Spring Into Sports high school venues.

To see all the photos and download them, go to LISC/Chicago's Flickr page.

Neighborhood Sports Chicago - Home page

New Hoops in the Hood video

Monday, December 19, 2011

Historic Gately Stadium Reopens After Sweeping Renovation

Friday, November 11, 2011

From Learn and Earn to Slam and Jam

Friday, November 11, 2011

John McCarron

Hoops in the Hood: Profile of Volunteer Coach Darren Tillis

Friday, November 11, 2011

Neighborhood Sports Chicago

Friday, February 27, 2009

1. Programs

2. Technical assistance and peer networking opportunities

3. Communications and technology elements

4. Administration

Growth Plan

Find videos and photo slideshows here

Historic Gately Stadium Reopens
After Sweeping Renovation

Hoops in the Hood:
Profile of Volunteer Coach Darren Tillis