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Authors, sign in!Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be posting some amazing stories about amazing people doing amazing things that have been sent to me or that I’ve read over the last few weeks. This is the first story — about Pat Clarke, a coach in Kansas City who’s using sports to mentor kids. He used to deal drugs as a teenager, but now he’s all for prevention — getting the kids while they’re young and showing them the variety of opportunities they can have. You can read the full story at the Kansas City Star website, but I’m adding a few excerpts below:
Clarke tells whoever will listen, whether it’s Mayor Mark Funkhouser, a City Council member or LINC staffer Charlane Scranton, who assists him, that inner-city kids exist within a state of emergency…[Clarke] wanted to do something that mattered. Selling drugs looking over his shoulder wasn’t it. He began organizing sports teams for kids…
In one of his first games [with the kids], his pitcher threw a straight shot over the plate. The batter slammed it toward the third baseman, who dived off the line and caught it backhanded. The third baseman’s mother was a crackhead. Clarke had bought his shoes for him. The boy looked at Clarke, who returned his stare briefly and then turned to hide his tears. He was proud of the boy, of his coaching, of something he had done. Nothing else had ever meant anything like it.
Another, older story from The Pitch, the Kansas City weekly, adds to the above, noting that Clarke’s passion is for the toughest kids:
[Clarke says,] “We deal with at-risk kids. I’m talking about kids who carry pistols. I deal with drug-dealing kids all the time. I know their parents. I watched them from diapers. Now they’re 16-, 17-year-old kids, running the neighborhood. They ain’t scared of nothing and nobody.”
[This post is one in a series of amazing stories about amazing people doing amazing things that have been sent to me or that I’ve read over the last few weeks. If you know of anyone that should be highlighted, please email me at info@heartlandinnovators.org.]
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Comments (1)
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be posting some amazing stories about amazing people doing amazing things that have been sent to me or that I’ve read over the last few weeks. This is the first story — about Pat Clarke, a coach in Kansas City who’s using sports to mentor kids. He used to deal drugs as a teenager, but now he’s all for prevention — getting the kids while they’re young and showing them the variety of opportunities they can have. You can read the full story at the Kansas City Star website, but I’m adding a few excerpts below:
Kansas Alcohol Addiction Treatment
Posted by rick boyed
|
August 27, 2008 2:47 AM
Posted on August 27, 2008 02:47