Football offers a path to success
Toronto high school program hopes to keep young men on the field and in school
Last Updated: Thursday, October 1, 2009 | 3:47 PM ET
By Malcolm Kelly, CBC Sports
Eastern Commerce quarterback Jeremy Ambraska airs a ball downfield before being tackled by a Lester B. Pearson defender during a scrimmage on Tuesday, Sept. 29. (Photo by Jim Humphrey) Ainsworth Morgan, a former CFLer and now a successful educator, stood on the sidelines at Toronto's Eastern Commerce Collegiate last Friday and called one of his former elementary school students over to say hello.
The young man sauntered up, as cool as could be, and they greeted warmly.
"Hey man, what position are you playing?" Morgan asked.
The answer was honest: "I don't know what it's called yet."
But he's playing it. And so are 41 others who hail from either Eastern or Monarch Park Collegiate a few blocks away, and who have come together to form the first football team seen on this field for decades.
The team is one of five new clubs on Toronto's high school grid scene, four of which were paid for with money donated by the Toronto Argonauts and local city Coun. Rob Ford, who fundraises for the effort through a foundation, and the other through independent fundraising.
Each new squad has first-class helmets and equipment and is taught by coaches from the schools plus community volunteers. The goal is straightforward — give young men more of a reason to stay in school and thus, by extension, out of trouble.
Quebec is already fully involved in such projects — using football and other extracurricular activities to combat a dropout rate that has hit 28 per cent, according to a recent Montreal Gazette article.
Morgan understands what can be done. Though he's not directly involved in the new teams, he's seconded from the Toronto school board to Pathways to Education, a program expanding nationally that was begun in the Regent Park housing project in 2001 by the local community health centre. It offers academic, social, financial and advocacy help to local teens designed to keep them in high school and move them to post-secondary places.
Their success has been astonishing — cutting a dropout rate of 56 per cent, more than double the provincial average, all the way down to 10 per cent.
"There needs to be a sense of belonging" for young men, Morgan says.
"When they come into that space [such as school], they know that they are visible, that someone is aware they are there and wants them to be there. I think that's critical you have that sort of environment, then. Regardless of their 'quote-unquote' deficiencies, they can be a successful student."
Football can provide that. So can a chess club. Or band, for that matter. Endless funding cuts have taken so much of it away in the last 15 years in Ontario, but much is coming back.
Herculean efforts
Morgan grew up in Regent Park — once one of downtown Toronto's toughest areas.
It was through the herculean efforts of his then single mom that he took up sports, discovered football was his best and rode that to a U.S. college scholarship, a degree in criminology, a masters in education from the University of Toronto and now a career as an educator.
He learned right away that getting to know your students, where they are coming from, is key to being a good teacher. Just stopping a young man in the hallway and asking how he's doing goes a long way.
Eastern Commerce kick returner Teroy Salmon pulls off a great juke against an opponent from Lester B. Pearson in the teams' scrimmage. (Photo by Jim Humphrey) Football means 42 young men getting to know and trust each other, and who are recognized by their coaches and made to feel part of the school's life.
"I think it's more than just the game itself, in terms of football, it's the things that come with it," Morgan says, as out on the Eastern field the newbies are discovering hitting and getting hit is harder than it looks on television.
"Sport without discipline is a destructive combination. That means expectations must be placed on players who come together to form a team — that it takes an understanding of the commitment, dedication, hard work."
Morgan, who played for a number of strong coaches — including local legend Clarke Pulford at Northern Secondary and, at the University of Toledo in Ohio, for the famously grumpy and successful Nick Saban — believes it's no coincidence that so many leaders in business and other aspects of life have strong sports backgrounds behind them.
Out on the field, there is a lot of shoulder tackling and body checking going on as the Eastern Commerce Saints go through their scrimmage, working out under head coach Sean Henderson — a physics and science teacher who knows all about adversity in sports, having played four years at the University of Toronto, where he won just once — and a volunteer staff of five.
They're doing it on an undersized field with the occasional pot hole (home games will be at Monarch's locally famous little stadium), watched by about five students along the sidelines.
Ask the players what they'd be doing on this Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. if they weren't here, and they pretty much say they'd be in front of the television or helping look after siblings.
In other words: Bored. And for young men, bored is a bad thing.
As Morgan says, there are a lot worse things to be doing at 5 p.m. on a Friday than rolling around in the dirt.
Besides, points out one Saints player with a teenaged boy's sense of perspective, football is good for attracting girls.
"Girls love football players," he grins.
