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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 15, 2012)
^Jortlanb Observer A u g u s t 15, 2012 Page 11 Vancouver East County Beaverton North Portland Zhykaire (from le ft) N a ss e ir and Larry lin e up fo r a relay race a t P ortland S tate U niversity during a su m m e r cam p run by the Police A ctivitie s League. Introduction WW* Camp shows boys and girls the way to higher ed C ari H achmann T he P ortland O bserver by Just a few years behind the college-age students who surround them, a group of teenage boys walk coolly in two lines through the heart of Portland State University’s tree- lined campus. At Portland State University, Christian Nicolas, 1 1 (from left), Pedro Rondon, 1 1 and Jonathon Guerrero, 1 1 , learn about healthy foods as one o f their lessons during National Youth Sports Camp. The exposure to college life also gets them thinking about their futures, a goal o f the sum m er camp. The young men are enrolled at the Police Activities League’s annual National Youth Sports Camp, an educational getaway for kids who come from poor and disadvantaged families. Considering many have never stepped foot on a college campus before, the boys’ quiet composure is impressive and hopeful to the watching elders. Lance Waddy, 27, a PAL camp leader and staff member o f 15 years, said the camp gives kids who have never been on a college cam pus before an example of college life and how feasible it is to attend college. Waddy says it may be that in many of these kids’ homes, nobody is talking about college. Maybe mom or dad didn’t go. “But if you’re here for four straight weeks and you see people with your face in college, you know it’s that easy to make the transition,” he said. Fives buses from Beaverton to Gresham were used to transport about half of the 410 low-income boys and girls who participated in the summer program. The youth are split up by age and gender into six groups that rotate throughout the day and around the college campus. Camp leader Tommy Rudd, 25, was just nine years old when he hopped a bus to his first National Youth Sports Camp in 1996. “I was really nervous,” he remembers. At Cun Hv M.MKw'TMt fa c r tv * O fc iittt that time, many kids his age were sneaking on buses and into camp just to spend a day away from home, off the streets and out of trouble. Now, Rudd is one of the 90 percent of camp staff members who return every summer to help kids cycle through. NYSP was created in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement to teach young mi norities in the south how to swim as well as expose other underprivileged youth through sports to opportunities of higher education. Held at university campuses, the summer program spread nationwide. For the past 19 years, PAL has held the camp at PSU, where the university donates over $100,000 in services. At camp, an in structional swimming program is mandatory and kids participate in additional sports like basketball, football, track and field, soccer, bowling and dance. Coach Paul Frazier has been coaching foot ball at PAL and NYSP camp for lOyears, but says his main purpose here is not football. “It’s education,” he said. “I’m here to help these kids understand the importance of edu cation. I just use football as a vehicle to get that across.” Frazier says kids revel in the excitement of being on a college campus, where university continued on page 19
