Lacrosse stirs hope in Bronx
By bringing sport to Highbridge Green, young coach opens opportunities for kids on field & in classroom
Lacrosse is often thought of as a sport mostly played by rich, white kids at sprawling northeast prep schools. It is a game that continues to wrestle with diversity and inclusion issues. Yet, one South Bronx middle school teacher who comes from one of the nation’s wealthiest communities is using the sport of lacrosse to open new opportunities for kids from one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city.
Dan Leventhal introduced students at Highbridge Green School to the sport two years ago and they were instantly hooked on the fast, physical game. By last spring, he collected enough gear through donations to field a team as part of the fledgling Bronx Lacrosse program.
In a school testing below the city average in every subject, Highbridge kids who have been playing lacrosse are showing noticeable improvements. Students in the program advanced an average of two grade levels in math and reading in the first year of play and were absent from school significantly less than other students, according to Bronx Lacrosse.
“Being in team sports immediately translates back into the academic environment,” Highbridge principal Kyle Brillante says in a recently released promotional film created to raise awareness about the program. “Of his lacrosse team, five or six of the kids have the highest growth of the entire grade. I don’t think that that’s a coincidence.”
Ironically, kids living in the poorest congressional district in the country are using a sport more closely associated with rich prep schools to chart a new course in life.
Leventhal, 25, grew up in the affluent hamlet of Chappaqua in Westchester County, was introduced to lacrosse at a young age and went on to win a Division III national championship in 2014 at Tufts University. After graduation, he enrolled in the Teach for America program that links young, smart college grads with schools in need of teachers. Leventhal landed at Highbridge, where 93 percent of the school comes from households making less than $16,000 a year.
“It’s insane how little opportunities (kids have here),” Leventhal said. “When I got here, there was a basketball team and that was it. The basketball team had 12 kids, and all the other kids are looking for something.”
So Leventhal, who has also competed internationally for Israel, gave them lacrosse.
“Instead of hanging out in the street and just leaving school and going to hang out and getting into not-so-good stuff, I knew I wanted to give them something to be passionate about,” Leventhal said. “We have 40 guys now who are really into it, who have bought in. We have multiple study halls a week because they know if they’re not passing their classes, they can’t play.”
Bronx Lacrosse is more than just an after-school clinic where Leventhal teaches kids how to throw and catch. It’s a full-year program with a schedule of Middle School Athletic League games played at Randalls Island, some against more developed city programs. Through sponsorships, Bronx Lacrosse is also participating in weekend jamborees in Westchester and Connecticut against some of the best youth teams in the country.
“If you want to be a good lacrosse player, if you really want to experience the sport, you have to play against the best,” Leventhal said.
Leventhal’s players meet regularly all week for team practices, study halls and meetings. He said he is involved in their academic and home lives, and his program is strict and no-nonsense. It requires a commitment, and in exchange, students are given an opportunity to be part of a team.
“It became very apparent, just from when we first started, other teachers, the principal and administrators in our school were noticing a difference in some of the kids on my team,” Leventhal said. “They were showing up to class on time. They were showing up to school on time. Their grades were
better, they were performing better on their exams, and lacrosse can be attributed to that. My principal’s a big supporter of this because it’s giving the kids another thing to work towards and they’re seeing results in the classroom.
“So that’s when I knew, when I saw those results, that this was something I wanted to make for real,” he said. “We want to empower these kids and give them something to work towards.”
Lacrosse, a game many of these kids had never heard of before, is providing a new life for them. It’s also helped them to make better choices and it’s given them an incentive to stay out of trouble.
Leventhal tells the story of one of his students who had a bad reputation around school.
“He’s a kid, who before lacrosse, he would be in the principal’s office all the time,” Leventhal said. “He’d be getting into fights. He came to me earlier this year, and said, ‘Coach, I want to be part of the team,’ and I said it wasn’t for him. ‘You’re getting into too many fights. You wouldn’t last.’”
For a whole month, there were no fights and he was eventually allowed to play on the team.
“Then this incident happened where a student hit him in the face,” Leventhal said. “He was on the team for a month at that point, and a student wanted to fight him and he refrained from hitting the kid back because he didn’t want to mess up his chance of playing lacrosse. So he walked away. This is a story that just blew up in our building because he was a kid who would get in all these fights and stepped away from one because he was now a part of the lacrosse team and he didn’t want to mess that up.
“He didn’t want to let coach down, was what he told the guidance counselor. So it’s stuff like that, and that’s just one example of a story how it’s really changing these guys. It’s really cool to see.”
Last year there was only one boys team, but the program is fielding a second squad this spring for girls with a total of 70 players signed up to play. Next fall, Leventhal is hoping to grow Bronx Lacrosse to another school or two.
“I want to take this organization on fulltime to give more kids the opportunity. Ideally, I want to be in a 6-12 school, so we can be with a kid from sixth grade all the way to 12th grade so we can help them get into college. That’s the goal and where we’re trying to go.”
One place he wants all his kids to go is college. While a select few may have the skills to play lacrosse in college one day, Leventhal said he hopes the lacrosse experience, at the very least, opens their eyes to college and other opportunities they may have ignored in the past.
John Pena, 13, discovered lacrosse at Highbridge. Though he’s only been playing a short time, Pena, the team captain, has noticeable skills that are showcased in a short film about the team making the rounds on the internet.
“When Mr. Leventhal told me that I had skills, I realized playing lacrosse could take me to college,” Pena says. “So that’s an opportunity for me. I want to be a professional lacrosse player like (New York Lizards star) Paul Rabil. I want to be something like him; the next big thing.”
Think about that for a minute. Kids in the South Bronx, who never heard of lacrosse until recently, are dreaming about playing it in college. As for the guy who introduced them to the game, he only cares that they’re thinking about college and the future, whether they continue to play or not.
“The kids are looking for something and we want to use lacrosse as this vehicle where it can give them different opportunities or put them on track to go to college,” Leventhal said. “Before lacrosse, a lot of my kids didn’t even think college was an option. Now I show them videos of college games and they say they want to go.
“Even if they’re not good enough (to play) and they still go off to college and don’t play lacrosse, that’s still what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to get them to that final goal of college because we know how important college is. That’s the ultimate goal.”