Boys and Girls Club head leads from memory
Three decades after joining, Doyle brings experience to role
TROY, N. Y. » Maintaining his inner child helps to make Patrick Doyle an effective leader for the Troy Boys and Girls Club.
Long before Doyle became the club’s chief executive, he was a 5- year- old boy walking into the summer program for the first time.
“Patrick has never forgotten what it’s like to be that kid, coming here for the first time, having a bad day or struggling in school,” said John Buntich, whose son Carson currently attends the club.
His parents divorced and both working, Doyle started coming to the center 30 years ago. He quickly decided to participate in “asmany activities that I possibly could.” He became a junior staff person at the age of 14 and joined the center full- time when he was 18, continuing towork there as he completed an associate degree in business administration at Hudson Valley Community College.
“I’ve kind of never left,” he joked.
Doyle speaks proudly of club programming that fulfills a critical community need, focusing not only on athletics, but providing skills and support that create well- rounded adults.
“We try to instill values that if you play a sport here, you also have to do a program,” he said.
Buntich said Doyle’s leadership models that example, and it is not uncommon to see him go from working in his office to playing a pickup game of basketball without missing a beat. He joked that Doyle “has the ability to be the smartest, most educated child I know.”
Doyle, on the other hand, said it’s easy to relate to children if you are simply willing to give them some time.
“If you like to do something and if they like to do it, it creates more of a bond,” he said.
Boardmember Nora McDowell has watched Doyle grow up. Her son, Rufus, started attending the afterschool program in 2007, when Doyle was still a counselor.
“He is an example of the great futures that can come from this organization,” McDowell said.
The legacy of a lifelong commitment spans beyond Doyle. One of his original counselors, Roy Smith, is the part- time teen programcoordinator and also works full- time with middleschool students in the Albany City School District. Smith, himself, also “grew up in the Boys and Girls Club,” he said, and began working there as a teenager.
It’s easy to see how such legacies are created, Buntich said.
“Coming here has been an incredible change for Carson,” he said. “In the last few years, his confidence, courage and social skills have grown exponentially. … It’s given him a voice.”