YMCA Strength and Conditioning Program

Yesterday I visited Frank at the Wang YMCA to check out his strength and conditioning program. Frank has done an excellent job designing a program that has a wide range of exercises, and is appealing to both genders. The kids are very serious about the program, and are lucky to have such a great instructor leading it.

Here are some photos:

YMCA Field Trip to Northeastern

On Friday, a group of children from the Wang YMCA's after school program came to Northeastern for a field trip. As part of the trip, they got to meet and play games with Northeastern athletes, ask the athletes questions, and go on a scavenger hunt around campus. The kids were enamored with the experience, as many had never before seen a college campus.

I want to give a big thank you from everyone at Sport in Society to all of the Northeastern athletes that came out (during finals week) and spent time with the kids. I also want to thank the kids for attending, and the YMCA staff for bringing them.

Here are some photos of the event:

Strength Program Update...

As I became more comfortable with my role as a P.E. instructor I felt as though there was more that I could bring to the table here at the Wang YMCA. With the formation of my new Strength and Conditioning program I was initially nervous of two things: that kids would not sign up and that those who came would not stay committed. Now in its second week, the program has seven members, five of which are boys in grades 9-12 and two are girls who are both seniors. Many of these kids participate in basketball, wrestling and football while the girls also play basketball but have a passion for boxing. I’ve been working with both groups to help them achieve their goals of being bigger, faster and stronger through a series of structured workouts that utilize all aspects of the Wang YMCA. With the weather finally feeling like spring for once, I held the running portion of the program on the roof of the Y which the kids seemed to really enjoy. I structured the schedule so that the five boys will arrive at 3pm, do their conditioning first then hit the weight room around 330pm where I break down that day’s workout and introduce new lifts and techniques each day. I then have the girls coming in at 330pm on a similar schedule to the boys, run first, lift after. This gives me the opportunity to work with both groups individually as they both require different speeds and weights. All five of my guys know their way around a weight room so it is easy for me to leave them and work with the girls who are just getting a feel for everything. So far the program is increasing in popularity and I could not be more excited for what is to come.

Mass Student Athlete Day

Every year, Sport in Society and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association hold Massachusetts Student Athlete Day, an event that honors high school student-athletes that have displayed excellence athletically, academically, and in the community. For the past couple of months, I have been helping plan this year's event. Today was the big day, and I am happy to say that the event was a tremendous success, thanks to the excellent speakers, the bright students (particularly those that served as panelists), the hard-working volunteers, and last but not least the Master of Ceremonies, Chris Lynch. There will be an article on the Sport in Society website regarding the event shortly, but first I will give you an exclusive, extended version of the day right here. Enjoy!

On Tuesday, April 12, Sport in Society along with the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association hosted the Massachusetts Student Athlete Citizenship Awards to recognize high school students who have displayed excellence athletically, academically, and in the community.

124 athletes were presented with awards at the event, which took place in the Curry Student Center Ballroom at Northeastern University. In addition to receiving awards, the students heard from General Brigadier Sellars, Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan, and Sport in Society Executive Director Dan Lebowitz.

General Brigadier Sellars was the first speaker, and he spoke of the importance of standing up to do the right thing. After his speech, four of the award winners participated in a panel discussing how athletes can better use their power as role models.

The next speaker was David Sullivan, and he told the story of an American Legion team from 1934 that passed up the opportunity to win a national championship because the one black player on their team was not allowed to compete. Sullivan used this story to stress how doing the right thing is more important than doing what’s cool or popular.

After Sullivan spoke, a second panel had a discussion on playing hard while maintaining good sportsmanship, among other issues. It should be noted that the Master of Ceremonies, Chris Lynch, who is the Director of the Boston Youth Sports Initiative did an excellent job narrating both panels.

After the second panel, Dan Lebowitz gave a rousing speech on a variety of topics, including the importance to represent oneself with pride, and how youth are the ones that have the power to make significant change in the world.

New Bedford Anti-Bullying Training

On the first Saturday of April Kristen, Ben, Caitlin and I headed down to New Bedford to facilitate an Anti-Bullying Training to a group of sixth grade boys who attend Saturday Academy at the Dennison Memorial Community Center. Although I have facilitated the anti-bullying curriculum before, this event seemed like our first real solo facilitation, as Ben, Kristen and I planned the agenda, chose the activities to include, and prepared all the materials needed for the day. It was a great experience and I look forward to facilitating similar trainings in the future! We incorporated several games as well as more serious activities into the curriculum to give the students variety and get them moving around so as not to get bored. For example, we played “Unfreeze a Friend” a game in which all players have to balance an object on their head while moving around the room doing things like hopping and skipping and must freeze when the object falls off their head. A peer then has to replace the object in order for them to become unfrozen and continue participating in the game. This game is used as a lead in for discussing the role of bystanders in the perpetuation of bullying. We then had the students take a quiz about bystanders and discussed the answers as a group. In the Sport in Society model bystanders are a critical element to understanding and fighting bullying in our schools and communities and thus the combination of the above two activities is a great way to get this message across. The students we were working with have recently dealt with very sever incidents of bullying in their community, and thus it was timely that we were presenting a training on bullying to these youth. With their experiences in mind the students all responded with great ideas on how to fight bullying in their community and were open to discussing the issue even though it was one that must have been painful for many of them to think about. I think that getting the students to see bullying as a problem that they can help actively tackle, even if they maybe neither victim nor perpetrator, can be empowering and allow students to see that there is no one way to deal with bullying, but as long as you do something, even if it is just walking away from the mass of people egging on a fight, they can make a difference. The staff at the community center was also very welcoming to us and I look forward to hearing their feedback on how the training affected their students and what the students have to say as they continue to discuss issues of bullying and violence in their community.