Local gym gives at-risk kids a place to sweat, thrive
They’re not running with gangs. They’re not running into trouble. They’re not running away. They’re just … running. Legging it out. Thundering down the gym floor turf. Wearing smiles as wide as their strides.
“It’s better to work out than to be on the streets,” says 15-year-old Jerome, a Las Vegas High School sophomore. “I need more improvement, but I plan on working my way up from high school to college and
one day the NFL.”
Working out their bodies. Working out their lives. While the former is a given (this is a gym, after all), the latter can be a happy byproduct for at-risk kids
GYM
amid the physical exertion and— potentially even more impactful — the behavioral examples at Game Changers Sports on South Decatur Boulevard.
“These are kids coming from low-income backgrounds and some of them are entering the juvenile justice or foster care systems,” says Brigid Duffy, director of the juvenile division of the Clark County District Attorney’s office, who is instrumental in partnering with the gym’s four co-owners for its Transforming the Game program of physical training and role-model mentorship.
“We want to get to them beforetheygettothose systems,” says Duffy, who is on the program’s board, along with State Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson.
“If I can get a kid to come here and do something positive with their life, I’m preventing the next carjacking, the next robbery. I’m stopping victims from happening. It’s the best thing I could ever be a part of.”
Preparing to officially unveil its status as a nonprofit organization onnov.3,followedbyan openhouseonnov.4,the free, ongoing program supervisedbythosecoowners — former Navy
SEAL Mel Spicer III, former NFL player Rodney Rice, probation officer Lamont Hicks and businessman Manus Edwards — provides strength and agility conditioning and sports coaching for boys andgirlsages6to18.
About 30 kids have been through the program, and
12 are currently enrolled. Additional components, such as nutrition education, are planned.
“I think we all flirt with disaster a little,” says Spicer, who grew up in Pittsburgh. “All of us had our exposure togangsbutwetryto make the right decision.
For all of us, balls helped keepusclean.weallgot scholarships to get out
of high school and go to college and play ball. So we’re trying to save them from going down the wrong path.”
Fanning out over the gym floor, kids and teens run the athletic gamut — shooting hoops over here, spiking volleyballs over there, tossing football spirals on this side, fine-tuning their agility (leaping from the
ground to a platform) on that side — under the friendly but laser-focused gazes of their coaches.
“Sports saved my life —itsavedallofus.ifi didn’t have sports and that structure, I don’t know what I would look like today,” says Rice,aformerdefensive back with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who earned
a college degree in social work.
“We’re teaching them howtobeprepared,howto be organized, be polite, be considerate, show gratitude, understand being part of a team,” he says, noting that although they don’t function as therapists, the children often confide their stories of difficult young lives marked by foster home shuffles and, sometimes, law-breaking.
Having introduced
Duffy to the program, probation officer Hicks, a former UNLV linebacker and current football coach at the Spring Mountain
Youth Camp correctional facility, points out that in court, caseworkers have highlighted the progress kids make in school after participating in Transforming the Game.
“Most of these kids have trust issues because most of the people they’ve depended onhaveletthemdown—the people they look up to are in gangs or selling drugs,” Hicks says. “But after every class I train, I ask the kids how their grades are. We always make sure they have good grades andarebeinggoodathome.”
Raised on the south side of Chicago, co-owner Edwards movedtolasvegastoescape gang influence, and wants to ensure that his diversion from a dangerous path sets anexample,evenwhen the physical training gets intense. “They know that here at Game Changers, we’re going to push them but we’ll be happy to see them,” he says. “They say, ‘They’re going to yell at me, but they’re going to give me a hug afterward.’ ”
Contact Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal. com. Follow @sborn1 on Twitter.