Edgar Santana prepares for his fight at Mendez Boxing Gym. (Photo by Gabriel Stargardter)

Edgar “Chamaco” Santana, a/k/a The Pride of Spanish Harlem, walks into the Mendez Boxing gym in Manhattan’s Flatiron District and approachs a duct-taped punch bag. He’s compact and wiry, like a tourniquet wound tight. Dipping his left shoulder while he jabs with his right, he clamps his jaw in concentration.

The gym walls are lined with images of famous Latino fighters – Salvador Sanchez, Julio Cesar Chavez – intermingled with the giants who, like Ali and Tyson, require no first name. Its clientele is mainly comprised of white-collar boxers who come to work out. These days, Santana is one of a few remaining pros.*

In 2008, Santana was one of the country’s most promising light welterweights with 24 wins and 17 knockouts to his name. ESPN televised his fights and talk of world titles was not unrealistic. But by late 2009, he was behind bars, a convicted drug trafficker.

Since his release from Riker’s Island two years ago, Santana has fought twice, both bouts ending in knockouts. In the second, against Omri Lowther, Santana was crowned North American Boxing Association champion. With the next step a bout against Wilfredo Negron, his comeback is on.

Edgar Santana,born in Manatí, Puerto Rico, moved with his family to El Barrio in 1986, when he was seven.

“It was definitely rough, a lot of drugs on the street,” Santana recalls, his soft voice barely registering over the thud of fists hitting bags. “There were people lined up to get drugs. That was a shock.”

He found his calling at 15, when José “Chegüi” Torres, a Puerto Rican light heavyweight, came to speak to students at his high school.  Santana, already practicing martial arts, decided to switch to boxing.

By 20, he’d turned pro, but struggled without a manager or promoter, bouncing back and forth between Puerto Rico and East Harlem. He changed trainers frequently, until by 2005 he’d begun to attract enthusiastic headlines. He also opened a barbershop, Santana Cuts, on East 106th Street, populating it with a coterie of childhood friends.

“He was on the cusp of his career,” said Hector Sarria, a trainer at Mendez Boxing. “He was close to fighting a world championship fight.”

Everything changed on July 18, 2008, when Santana was arrested at his East 102nd Street home. He was just weeks from an ESPN-televised fight, but officers of the New York Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Strike Force, listening in for over a year on his conversations with two suspected drug traffickers, had little concern about that.

That morning, Santana emerged from his apartment in handcuffs wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with one of the many enigmatic slogans of local artist and friend James De La Vega, which now line his barbershop walls: “The pressure of survival in the big city will make you lose sight of your dream. Hang in there.”

Accused of brokering a deal to mail a kilo of cocaine from Puerto Rico to New York, Santana posted $150,000 bail. He eventually served four months on Riker’s Island, convicted of conspiracy to sell narcotics. He emerged a free man in January, 2010.

His arrest and imprisonment affected fans at Mendez Boxing. “It was kind of deflating for everyone,” says patron Mitch McMahon while Santana lays into an Everlast bag. “You live in the jungle and there’s a lot of alligators. The longer you live there, the more likely you are to get bitten.”

“Believe none of what you hear and half of what you know,” adds trainer Joey Gamache. “Boxing’s an unforgiving sport.”

Santana himself remains cagey about the episode – “Sometimes you’re at the wrong place at the wrong time,” he says – but is more willing to talk about prison’s impact on his physical state. He was well known on Riker’s, even respected, but struggled to keep in shape. It was, he says, more a waste of time than anything.

Once out, Santana decided to take a break from boxing and focus his attention on the barbershop. But soon he longed for the ring, and sought out Leon Taylor, a trainer he’d long admired, to orchestrate his comeback. He hopes to be challenging for a world title within a year.

“I have the ability to go many places,” Santana says.

At Santana’s barbershop on East 106th Street, sandwiched between an aromatic botanica and a Hispanic church, the unprepossessing red awning seems to herald a down-at-heel interior. But De La Vega’s Basquiat-meets-Haring scrawls give it a gritty sophistication. Santana points to his favorite inscription, daubed on the shop’s white wall: “Your mind has the amazing ability to organize chaos.”

As he sits by the window, slugging water from a gallon Poland Spring bottle, Santana moans about being unable to eat much over the holidays. But he’s about to travel with his manager, Brian Cohen, and his trainer, Taylor, to Dover Downs Casino in Delaware. When he weighs in, Santana needs to hit 143 pounds. He’s currently at 147, but doesn’t seem fazed by losing four pounds in two days. “What I have now is water weight,” he says. “Not fat.”

With his tight cheekbones and long lashes, Santana doesn’t look like your average cauliflower-nosed prizefighter. He dresses differently, too: his jeans tucked into ankle-high boots, the ensemble accessorized with an elegant fedora, complete with feather. He admires Picasso who, Santana says, made people think differently about art.

“I was always a little bit more open-minded about things,” he says, displaying his arm as an example. “You’ve never seen someone with a red sleeve.” A red-inked tattoo circles his bicep, a work in progress.

It’s a busy afternoon. Carlos Flores walks in with his mother and son. He’s wants his beard trimmed before he jets off to Jamaica the next morning. “I’m the subway hero,” he says, getting out his phone to display a video of his appearance on the Rachel Ray show.

Last year, Flores jumped onto the 6 train tracks at the 103rd Street station to save a man who’d fainted, a celebrated act that brought, among other rewards, this free family trip.

Antony Marquez, one of the shop’s barbers, arrives, and greets Edgar knuckle to knuckle. “Jefe,” he says in acknowledgement and respect. “No matter how famous he gets,” Marquez says of his boss, “he stays in the Barrio and that’s why he’s loved round here.”

Armando Alequin, waiting for a cut, bemoans the decline of boxing in Spanish Harlem. When he was growing up, the sport produced role models. Boxers, Alequin says, demand respect; they eat well, look after themselves and don’t use drugs. “You’re a badass but clean cut,” he says.

Santana looks nervous at that. “I hope I inspire people, most especially kids,” he says. “But I don’t know. Being a role model is tricky. There’s so many things that come with it, so much expected from you. I can do without that.”

The bright façade of Dover Downs Hotel & Casino emerges from an endless ribbon of strip malls and chain motels.

A function room serves as the boxing arena; a giant chandelier hangs above the ring. A few rows away, with a look of furious disappointment, Santana sits watching the action: Anthony “The Bull” Smith knocking out Douglas “Al Capone” Otieno in the sixth round; Epifanio “Diamante” Mendoza’s corner staff throwing in the towel against Amir “Hardcore” Mansour, also in the sixth.

Santana’s own fight was abruptly cancelled. The explanations vary: Santana’s manager, Brian Cohen, says opponent Wilfredo Negron had a car crash on the way to the airport. In the press box, veteran boxing journalist Rick Scharmberg has heard rumors that Negron wasn’t allowed time off from work. One of Santana’s corner staff, Emmanuel Brujan, provides a different narrative: “He was scared.”

Cohen, an affable bull of a man wearing a thick silver chain, takes the disappointment in stride. His client gets paid anyway – Santana’s promoter Dave Escalet suggests anywhere between $3,000 and $10,000. In the boxing world, Cohen says, such disruptions aren’t unusual. “I’ve seen fighters fake an anxiety attack before a fight,” he says. “I’ve seen it all.”

Santana seems strangely distracted. As his entourage makes its way to an after-party in the casino’s oyster bar, he drops behind, walking alone, carrying a bottle of iced tea. “I only came to get paid,” he says.

Cohen, however, leads Santana off to a table where three white-haired men are sitting. Santana shakes their hands; they talk a bit. Pleasantries exchanged, he and Cohen return to the table.

Ordering a second vodka, Cohen struggles to contain his excitement. He doesn’t want to “jinx” anything, but the discussions bode well for his client’s future. Santana, declining another drink, doesn’t seem to share Cohen’s enthusiasm. “People offer me a lot of things,” he says.

Santana hopes to defend his NABA title in February, again in Dover. But at 32, he knows he’s only got four or five more years left to fight, so Negron’s no-show represents a setback. The comeback is still on, he insists, but it’s been delayed.

A few weeks before he’s due back in Dover to defend his title, Santana walks into the Mendez gym wearing a black t-shirt featuring De La Vega’s latest aphorism: “Be Mindful, Even if Your Mind is Full.”

Taylor, his coach, greets him with a clasped hand and a shoulder barge that knocks his charge sideways. In mock retaliation, Santana clips him lightly with a weightless fist.

After a half hour’s shadow-boxing, Santana leaves the ring, sweating through his pants at the knee. He looks in good shape.

“Whatever I did before; now I’m doing twice as much,” he says. “It’s a good opportunity. This fight is very important to me.”

Santana and his team then head to another Mendez gym a few blocks away to work on conditioning.

“I definitely started 2012 with a whole different head on my shoulders,” Santana declares. “I want to show everybody I’m the real deal.”

*The Uptowner originally reported that Santana was the only professional boxer training at Mendez gym; in fact, there are several others.

Le Cheile in Washington Heights hosts the 2011 Pinball Open (Photo by Lindsey Wagner)

More than 200 amateurs, professional players and pinball machine collectors gathered in Washington Heights earlier this month for the inaugural Pinball Open.

Held at Le Cheile, a new neighborhood restaurant and gallery, the two-day event drew spectators from all over the city.

“This is the first ever Washington Heights annual pinball competition,” said Dave Hollander, co-owner of Le Cheile, who teamed up with Steve Marsh, tournament co-director, and Brooklyn pinball champion Francesco LaRocca.

“People from the community came in and said, ‘Hey, you’ve got pinball here, this is so exciting!’ It’s really a pleasure to see,” said competitor Joe Hofler, who helped organize the tournament.

Both pinball junkies and first-time players joined the action on Saturday. Players with the four best scores competed on Sunday to determine the champion. Frank Romero, 45, a world-ranked player from Rockland County, won the top prize of more than $400.

“What I like about pinball is that every time a new game comes out, it offers a new challenge; it’s never the same thing,” said competitor Sean Grant, 38.

“The best thing about pinball is the people,” added Hofler.  “The players, the community, just everyone getting together no matter walk of life you come from, what you do,” he said. “You just have a good time.”

The directors hope that the Washington Heights Pinball Open will become an annual, even semi-annual event, bringing pinball enthusiasts together but also helping the community.

This year, the event raised over $600 for Dolphin Park, a community playground on West 180th Street and Cabrini Boulevard.

Randall’s Island became a world apart from conventional sports when 94 teams from 27 states and four countries played for the Quidditch World Cup last weekend. Middlebury College, whose students adapted the game from the “Harry Potter” novels in 2005, took home the trophy for the fifth straight year, beating the University of Florida.

As the novels’ beloved title character explains, quidditch is like “basketball on broomsticks with six hoops.” A quidditch match involves two teams of seven players,. Each team has three chasers, who score by throwing a volleyball called a quaffle through one of the opposing team’s hoops. Two beaters provide defense by hurling dodge balls against opponents. The keeper protects the team’s three goalposts. Meanwhile, a seeker tries to capture the snitch, a tennis ball attached to a neutral player who can roam the field; catching the snitch can win the game.

Players are required to hold brooms between their legs throughout the game.

The first World Cup, an intercollegiate match between Middlebury and Vassar College, took place in 2007. This year, after the first regional championships in May, teams from almost 100 colleges and high schools covered ten football fields across Randall’s Island.

Joining the interscholastic crowd was a large turnout of muggles—human beings— wearing Potter-inspired garb. Spectators lined up to buy broom merchandise and real-life variants of Butterbeer and Bertiebott’s Every Flavor Beans.

Courtney Orr and Katherine Trahan compete in the 2011 New York City Marathon to raise money for  Harlem RBI, which works with local children. The Uptowner follows the runners from the time they wake up until they cross the finish line.

Read more about the Harlem RBI runners and the marathon here.

Courtney Orr wears her finisher's cape with pride after running her first New York City Marathon and raising $2,500 for Harlem RBI. (Photo by Nat Rudarakanchana)

Courtney Orr woke up at 6 a.m. ready to run 26.2 miles. She put on her red and black spandex outfit, had a big bowl of cinnamon oatmeal and said goodbye to her roommate.

“I’m kind of in a fog. It’s weird to think about what’s going to be happening in a couple hours,” said Orr, 21, a Manhattan Marymount College senior running her first marathon.

As a record 47,000 runners pounded the pavement through all five boroughs in the 41^st annual New York City Marathon on golden fall day, Harlem RBI, an organization devoted to the success of East Harlem children, fielded seven runners who collectively raised more than $54,000.

The kids from Harlem RBI, where Orr has interned since July, gave her lucky red bracelets for motivation. “So they’ll be with me in spirit,” she said, smiling down at her wrists.

Harlem RBI, one of more than 200 charities represented in the marathon, began 20 years ago with volunteers turning an abandoned lot on East 101^st Street into two baseball diamonds for East Harlem kids. Now each year, 1,000 kids play for Harlem RBI teams, join its summer reading program or take SAT prep classes. The organization aims to have participants grow up with the program, joining in kindergarten and continuing through high school.

“Our main goals are to get our kids into college and then for them to have a fulfilling life where they’re stable as adults,” said Harlem RBI spokeswoman Hannah Baek. “In East Harlem, 50 percent of kids drop out of high school, but this past year 100 percent of our seniors graduated from high school. So we’re very proud.”

Orr began training this summer while she was a Harlem RBI intern. She was never really a runner, and “when I first started training in July, I was like ‘no way,’” Orr said.

She tried to keep her expectations reasonable. “My goal is to not faint and just to cross the finish line,” Orr said. “If I finish, I know I’ll want to do marathons all the time.”

Orr did not faint, and finished in four hours, 44 minutes and 17 seconds, raising $2,500 for Harlem RBI.

The program’s success rates and athletic focus attracted runners like Elizabeth Bildner, who felt “a connection to the organization’s commitment to sports and education as a way to teach kids teamwork, perseverance and responsibility both on the field and in the classroom,” Bildner said. Asked to run for Harlem RBI, “I jumped at the chance.”

She raised $5,155 for Harlem RBI, and finished the marathon, her second, in four hours, six minutes and 47 seconds.

Sarah Haga, a Harlem RBI board member for almost three years, began planning to run the marathon in January. “There’s nobody I would want to run for more,” she said. “They garner team spirit, and I feel like a part of a great team.”

Haga also ran the marathon—her first—in celebration of her 50^th birthday on October 26. She finished in four hours, 27 minutes and 22 seconds and raised $6,635 for Harlem RBI.

Among the other RBI runners: Katherine Trahan, 28, competing for the first time this year. Her parents traveled all the way from Austin* to cheer her on as she crossed the finish line in five hours, 48 minutes and 20 seconds, raising $5,592.  And Brandon Abbs, a Bostonian and marathon runner since 2003, whose childhood friend from Harlem got him interested in raising money for the project. Abbs finished in four hours and eight minutes and raised $5,047 for Harlem RBI.

The RBI cadre—and everyone else, including an estimated two million spectators—was in luck. The sun shone through a nearly cloudless blue sky throughout the day and the crowds were enthusiastic. In East Harlem, spectators of all stripes turned out to cheer for the racers.

Paul Riley stood applauding on Fifth Avenue near 127^th Street with his wife and daughter, who was cheering for her schoolteacher.

“It’s a great thing; you have to have strong willpower to run through all the different boroughs,” said Riley, a marathon watcher for 11 years. “I wanted to give my daughter a chance to see that you can basically accomplish anything if you put your mind to it.”

Riley likes the way the marathon unites New Yorkers. “It brings the city together for one day,“ he said.

A small group of traditional African drummers, called a Djembe orchestra, was out playing for marathoners as it has since 2006. Dubaka Leigh, of West African descent, lives on Fifth Avenue and organizes the musicians to play on his front steps.

“We started it for the Africans because they’re always the first ones running through,” Leigh said. “They turn their heads when they hear their drums.”

Adolphus Stewart stood on Fifth Avenue and 125^th Street cheering for no one in particular. He lives nearby and wanted to support the runners who were struggling. As one man limped forward, Stewart started clapping and yelled, “Come on, just four miles to glory! Whatcha gonna say on Monday? Let’s goooo!”

The marathon is one of his favorite New York events. “It’s a really wonderful, beautiful day in Harlem,” he said.

“People all around the world get to see Harlem—not the Harlem from TV, but the real Harlem. People out here are supportive and it’s beautiful,” he said.

He pointed to an open window in a brownstone across the street. “Just now there was a little girl in the window, jumping and all excited. It’s just a really beautiful day.”

See more about Orr and Trahan’s race in an Uptowner slideshow here.

*Correction: Trahan’s parents did not travel from Houston, as originally reported.

Harlem children take penalty shots at Edwin van der Sar (Photo by Gabriel Stargardter)

A cold and blustery Harlem welcomed a soccer superstar, a windsurfing champion and a Dutch prince on Friday. Here to highlight the importance of sports as a tool for social change, Robbie Naish, Edwin van der Sar and Prince Pieter-Christiaan van Oranje got their hands dirty, joining in a soccer match between fourth and fifth graders from PS 192 and PS 325.

The 64 youngsters were participating in an after-school development course run by America SCORES, a national program that provides soccer, poetry and community service lessons to children from low-income families.

“It’s a great program for the kids both academically and physically,” saidPS 192 soccer coach, Larry Wingate, as he stood on the side, cheering on his team.

He proudly watched his boys run up and down the pitch exhaustively, unafraid to get stuck in, sometimes falling over, always enthusiastic. The cheers when they scored were matched only by their groans a few minutes later when they conceded, the goalkeeper apparently having fallen asleep.

Wingate is part of the Coach Across America program, which places sports coaches in youth organizations like America SCORES. James Kallusky, the executive director, described these coaches as “mentors” who analyze not just the children’s physical health, but their “emotional, the moral and the cognitive well-being, too.”

Empowerment and self-confidence are crucial to the program, said Paul Caccomo, executive director of Up2Us, the umbrella organization that runs Coach Across America.  Caccomo highlighted some of the problems facing the young soccer players.

“We have a very high dropout rate in our public schools, an enormous childhood obesity rate, about 800,000 of our kids are in gangs,” he said.

His program aims to use sports to inspire young people, but Caccomo believes that the $3.5 billion cuts to public school sports programs will have a devastating effect on communities like Harlem; “they’ll hit the low-income communities the worst,” he said.

The three celebrities came to Harlem as ambassadors of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, a London-based organization that celebrates the power of sports to effect social change. Friday was the launch of their partnership with Coach Across America to provide 115 coaches throughout Manhattan. The foundation runs 89 sports-community projects in 39 countries, and its famous ambassadors visit to encourage both participants and coaches, explained its global director, Ned Wills.

“A lot of these guys have taken a lot of benefit from sports personally and want to give back,” Wills said.

It was difficult to get Van der Sar off the pitch on Friday. The goalkeeper, who retired from Manchester United and Holland this summer, showed off his skills to his adoring audience, and at one point ran to tend to a boy on the ground with an injury. At the end of the game he challenged some of the youngsters to a penalty shootout.

Windsurfer Robby Naish said: “Sports sure did an awful lot for me, and it’s crucial for kids’ development. Just the right bit of steering at the right time in their lives is crucial at steering them in the right path.”

Van der Sar said he believed the shouts and cheers that engulfed the Jacob Schiff Field were a sign of soccer’s popularity.

“I spoke to a girl and her mother and if you see how into soccer they were, it’s so cool,” he said during his first visit to Harlem.

Jaden Pitman, 8, scored a goal as his mother looked on proudly. A pupil at PS 325, Jaden said soccer was his favorite sport. Today his team ended up on the losing side of a 2-1 match with PS 192.  When players on the winning team were asked whether they enjoyed the after-school program, they all screamed “yes.”

Nine-year-old Jose Henriques, who scored the winning goal, said he’d heard of Manchester United, though not directly of van der Sar.  But Henriques was sure of one thing: He wants to continue to play sports, especially soccer.

Prince Pieter-Christiaan admitted he has “two left feet” when it comes to soccer, but said he’d come to Harlem to celebrate “the many people who start these programs and who change lives. It’s not easy in this part of Manhattan, especially with the school dropouts, so I greatly admire them.”

Today’s event was planned to deliberately coincide with the New York City Marathon, which he and van der Sar are running in Sunday.

“The marathon weekend is one of the largest single days of physical activity in the nation, and yet it’s taking place right here in New York where many of our kids have obesity problems,” Caccamo said. “There’s a message there.”

Friday was about shining the celebrity spotlight on programs intended to tackle the stark problems many poor children face. The public school dropout rate in New York is around 35 percent, according to the Mayor’s office, and with state and federal budget cuts, the education, health and crime problems will worsen, Wills said.

“This is the time you should be increasing investment in these programs,” he said.

Calvin Wright (left) and fellow unicyclists rode through the African American Day Parade. (Photo by Paul Smith)

It’s the perfect morning to ride a unicycle. “Not too hot, not too cold,” says Calvin Wright, stretching outside his Manhattan Avenue apartment. His neighbor, Milton Johnson, watches from the steps, unfazed by the sight of an extremely tall 56-year-old whizzing down the block on one wheel.

“Ever since I’ve known him, he’s been riding that unicycle,” says Johnson, shaking his head.

Wright recently began working as a Midtown limo dispatcher, following two years of unemployment. He works night shifts, leaving mornings free for his daily cycle from West 117^th Street to Harlem Hospital on 135^th Street and back. It’s a demanding 2.5-mile journey. “Unlike a bike, there’s no coasting,” says Wright. “You’ve got to keep moving.”

He knows “every cranny in the street, every vendor,” and makes the pilgrimage regardless of the weather. “When it’s 20 degrees, I wear two pairs of sweatpants, two sweatshirts and a windbreaker,” he said. “I’ll put baggies on my hands, because plastic makes you sweat. Then I put em into gloves, so by the time I finish riding, my T-shirt is soaking wet.”

While today’s autumnal temperatures require only a fleece sweater, sweat glistens on his forehead after five minutes. His ankles piston up and down. He rides on one leg for four blocks, and often goes backwards, screeching to a halt inches ahead of traffic. “I like it when the lights stop,” he says, impatiently hopping on the spot and jingling his keys. “That means it’s showtime.”

Blame the 9 a.m. start or the dazzling sun, but Wright isn’t quite stopping traffic this morning. He blends into the Lenox Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard commotion, but his maneuvers do turn heads. An occasional van toots its horn, a tourist snaps him with her camera opposite Sylvia’s restaurant and an elderly man waiting for the bus applauds and cheers, “Black Man, do that thang. Hallelujah!”

Around 125^th Street, Wright encounters a dip in the road and topples. But he lands on his feet. “If you fall off your horse, you get back on,” he says. His vintage Schwinn-brand cycle, with a 24-inch wheel, has withstood two decades of scrapes.

Outside Harlem Hospital, newspaper vendor Keisha Patterson has watched Wright peddle by for five years. “I always admire him,” she says. “I just call him the Unicycle Man.”

Last month, Wright assembled a crack team of one-wheeled riders for his neighborhood’s African-American Day Parade. He enlisted old friend Abdul Wright on a 6-foot cycle and Kenneth Smith and Kip Anthony Jones from the Bronx’s King Charles troupe. The clan zipped around the Labor Local 79 float, performing tricks to the delight of the camera phone-wielding crowd.

Wright met Anthony Jones and Smith the previous month at the New York Unicycle Festival, when 50 cyclists crossed the Brookyln Bridge in an eye-catching spectacle. The popularity of stunt cyclists, like Vancouver-based Kris Holm, has inspired young enthusiasts. Wright hopes to take the sport to middle school gym classes, and to promote his healthy lifestyle. He’s currently drawing up business plans.

Wright remembers when his pursuit was first fashionable. In the 70’s, King Charles ran a Bronx unicycle club to keep neighborhood children out of trouble. Wright didn’t attend, but at 13, learned to ride at his cousin’s house, with Harold and Gregory, his younger brothers. “We took turns in the hallway, holding on to the walls and trying to ride without falling,” says Wright. “We realized your balance is your waist and your arms are like the wings of an airplane.”

Soon he was hooked, rocking back and forth, spinning circles, attempting jumps. He would descend the 12 steps of the World Trade Center plaza and play basketball while seated on his saddle. “The only thing I’m unable to do now is to stop and pick up a quarter,” he says.

For some, the sight of him on one wheel evokes nostalgia. “Guys tell me, ‘Man, I used to do that years ago,’” he says. “And I say, ‘I never stopped.’”

“Calvin’s more eager than I was,” says his brother Harold. “For Calvin, it’s like walking.”

Wright’s soft-spoken, polite manner gives way to an excitable exhibitionism when he discusses his passion.

“In the ’hood, I’m a bonafide celebrity,” he says. “When I put on my hat backwards and get on my unicycle you will not think that I’m 56,” he says, flashing his six-pack. “My doctor told me, ‘Mr Wright, I don’t know what it is, but the shape you’re in, you could live to be 103.’”

Squash Provides Path to College from The Uptowner on Vimeo.

Every afternoon middle and high school students file into the StreetSquash building to play a sport most hadn’t heard of before they joined the program. The conspicuously sleek, modern facilities on West 115^th Street become a beehive of activity, with squeaking sneakers, the thwock of rubber against wood, and studying—lots of studying.

Combining a niche sport with after-school help—including tutoring, college preparation, mentoring and community service—StreetSquash aims to prepare children for life after high school.

Founded in 1999, the free program started with 24 students. “Most of the kids who meet us, they only know squash as a vegetable,” said director of strategic development Sage Ramadge. Harlem cares about basketball and football, he knows. “But once kids see what we’re doing, we don’t have a problem keeping them interested.”

StreetSquash now serves more than 150 students from local partner schools. To date, 100 percent of graduates have entered college. “It’s a success rate we’re very proud of,” said Ramadge, adding that 86 percent have or are on track toward a degree.

“It’s really exciting to work with the students,” said Sareen Pearl, director of college prep programs. “Every time they get into college, it feels like I got into college.”

Beyond squash, kids take art and writing workshops. City College provides a nutrition class. Trips around New York build cultural awareness.

Students also combine competitive squash with volunteer work, Ramadge said. One month they’ll help paint schools in Brooklyn, another they’ll work in community gardens or deliver food to the poor and elderly.

“It helps you understand that it’s good to give back,” said 2005 graduate Sade Watts. Now a student at Hostos Community College, Watts still does her part, returning as a volunteer receptionist and instructor.

With an annual budget of $1.2 million—roughly doubled since the program opened—StreetSquash invests $7,000 in each child per year, including trips, scholarships, food and other costs.

Financing comes from a mix of individuals and grants from  such donors as the Heisman Trophy Trust, Gallagher Family Fund and JP Morgan Chase Foundation. The Columbia University squash team rents its eight pristine composite courts. Each annual fundraiser and squash tournament has raised more money than the last, said program director Leah Brown.

Among the program’s fans is James Garner, head of maintenance and father of 15-year-old participant Nasean Catron. Continual government cutbacks have exacerbated a shortage of after-school options in Harlem, Garner said. “It’s hard to find programs that provide sports and education,” he said. “This is a blessing.”

With their coaches watching, Team Taino players practice a proper defensive stance. After three months of basketball practice in the gym at Taino Towers, organizers plan to expand the program. (Photo by Jason Tomassini)

Conclusion of a four-part series. For previous installments, visit here.

Ikay Henry is sitting on a stage at the north end of the Taino Towers gym, leafing through a manila folder and smiling. He’s perusing 13-year-old Daquan Clarke’s math homework, several worksheets of word problems and complex fractions, adorned by near-perfect scores.

Henry has known Clarke most of his life. He coaches Clarke in Taino Towers’ embryonic youth basketball team; in the past, he’s worked at Clarke’s junior high school and at a YMCA where Clarke took acting classes. Both grew up at Taino Towers.

Henry is smiling because Clarke never used to earn grades like this; in fact, he never seemed to care about school at all.

“Just the growth that I see now is amazing,” says Henry, 28, a tall, broad man with a thin mustache.

Clarke acknowledges the transformation, too. “Before my grades were terrible,” he says at the end of practice. “Now it’s a B and up.” Clarke shrugs off the improvement, noting that he brought his homework to practice because he wants to show it to his parents later, in hopes of landing an improved Christmas bounty.

To Henry, though, that a kid would even think to show his coaches his homework means that, at least in one case, the basketball program—after a rocky start—is paying off.

It began in September after a particularly violent year at Taino Towers, a federally-subsidized apartment complex in East Harlem that houses about 3,000 residents and became the site of frequent fights between rival youth gangs over the spring and summer. Basketball, every Tuesday and Thursday in the gym beneath the complex, marks the start of a larger effort at Taino, to offer classes, leadership training and other sports like football, baseball and skiing. Some of the educational programs were supposed to begin by now in a new learning center that has been delayed, but is slated to open by the new year.

Team Taino also serves as a case study in the complexities of starting a program that targets at-risk kids in urban neighborhoods. As a holiday break approaches, its organizers are simultaneously reflecting on the impact they’ve already made and considering how to expand into the future.

“So far it has been able to maintain itself on the strength of the participants,” says William Thomas, a technology entrepreneur from Vermont who helped organize the team. “The long-term planning and financing will be a challenge.”

Aris Martin, a volunteer basketball coach, runs a drill during Team Taino’s recent practice. With more funding, Martin hopes the team can soon enter more tournaments around the city. (Photo by Jason Tomassini)

Its ambitious future plans will require money, but so far Team Taino hasn’t needed much. The gym is rent-free, reopened after being empty for years due to vandalism and misuse. Thomas and the team’s five volunteer coaches are unpaid. Basketball is a sport that requires only a hoop and a ball.

Still, for the team to survive, it needs to expand beyond Taino, the coaches say. That means tournaments, jerseys and transportation for a consistent roster of players.

“It’s about looking presentable and putting the resources together,” says Sherrod Kersey, 25, a coach from the Bronx who, like all the coaches, was a classmate of either Henry or his childhood friend Aris Martin, another team coach. “We need to look official. We go to tournaments and it’s embarrassing sometimes.”

White and gold jerseys are on the way, thanks to donations from Midtown Elevator Company and the Magic Johnson Foundation, housed in Taino Towers. Arco Management, the complex’s property manager, kicks in some money and several of Arco and Thomas’ corporate connections—the publisher of a high-end golf magazine plans to run a golf clinic; a scout from the New York Yankees has promised baseball training—have offered time and equipment.  But there’s no actual budget yet, says Thomas who, along with Taino Towers property manager Maria Cruz, handles most of the program’s financial and organizational responsibilities.

In all, the program so far has amassed “a couple thousand dollars” for an expanding roster of 40 kids aged 6 to 18 years, Thomas says, and organizers are actively looking for more money.

At a similar neighborhood program, the Children’s Aid Society’s East Harlem Center, the annual budget is about $90,000, about 80 percent of which comes from government grants, says the center’s director, David Giordano. Children’s Aid Society is larger than Taino, serving about 120 kids, but they are of comparable age and organized similarly, with younger kids there from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. and the older kids from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Like Taino, it has a basketball gym—but kids have to enroll in educational and “personal development” programs before they can play. One difference, to date, is that $90,000 gives Giordano’s kids opportunities, from traveling the country for youth conferences to participating in UPS-sponsored driving safety initiatives.

Money helps. As a boy, Henry was selected for Merrill Lynch’s Scholarship Builders, which guaranteed full tuition to any child in his first-grade class later accepted by a college. Along the way, Henry met with personal mentors, visited far-flung locales on college tours and interned on Wall Street before studying business management at Hampton University in Virginia. About 15 of the 25 students in the program attended college and 20 graduated high school, according to a 1999 report by The New York Times. In his own work—at Taino, the YMCA or his own nonprofit, Harlem Mentors—Henry knows he will never have such substantial resources.

Some funding comes with a catch, Giordano says; most grants must be used in very specific ways, often restricting his autonomy. But without resources, there’s scant incentive for volunteers and participants to stay with the program through the inevitable tribulations. “It becomes a little limited, what you can ask of people and what you can’t,” says Giordano, who has worked with teens since 1980. “When you’re paying people, that adds another level.”

But Henry insists money isn’t everything. Merrill Lynch paid Henry’s college bills but, more importantly, his mentors taught “manners and how to act,” he says. “That’s what I’m trying to do here.”

His childhood friend, Aris Martin, wasn’t involved with Scholarship Builders but did attend prestigious Rice High School along with Henry. Martin didn’t enjoy the same perks and didn’t go on to a university. However, he says what he’s learned from his mistakes—he’s now working for Arco Management and, after some initial doubts, is perhaps the most omnipresent and enthusiastic of the team’s coaches—is just as valuable to teens.

“I see them doing better than me,” he says.

There is no magic formula for starting a youth program—at a basic level, the youth workers must relate to the kids. It’s unclear whether Team Taino will do enough to have a long-term effect on children, but perhaps its most valuable capital is the goodwill building between its coaches and players.

“I see them on a daily basis so they get more out of it,” says Martin, who lives at Taino. “When they see me in the streets they pick their head up.”

And that’s what Team Taino is banking on, Thomas says. “You can have all the money in the world; if you don’t have the right people, the money won’t be utilized in the right way.” Though even with the right people, the children of East Harlem face many pitfalls.

Both Giordano and Taino Towers’ basketball coaches have found the distractions of the digital age a barrier in reaching teens. “The attention span is very small,” says Norman Anderson, a 28-year-old coach from Brooklyn. “You have to keep on reminding them and reminding them until it eventually sticks.”

On cue, Anderson stops to yell at Clarke, who tried unsuccessfully to outmaneuver an opponent in a drill, took a bad shot and missed. “If you had used the move we just taught you, you would’ve scored!” Anderson reminds him loudly. Clarke nods sheepishly.

Giordano blames the recession, which shuttered or cut back many local youth programs, for an increase in teen crime at housing projects like Taino Towers. As of mid-December, the 25th police precinct, which includes Taino Towers, has seen an increase from last year in murders and assaults and is on pace for an increase in robberies.

In school District 4, which includes East Harlem and parts of the Upper East Side, 67 percent of students graduate, compared to 74 percent statewide and 59 percent citywide.  In 2008, 35.6 percent of local families with children under 18 were living below the poverty line. It’s under those conditions when gangs become most attractive, Giordano says.

“That coach in the street they grew up with can give them something, but not everything,” Giordano says. From the child’s perspective, “if I’m not finding the security in a space or program that’s open, I find it in a crew,” Giordano continues. “There’s hierarchy and structure.”

At Taino Towers, structure developed slowly for the basketball team. Early practices suffered because its coaches didn’t show up consistently, because drills were less organized, and because misbehaving kids were allowed to disrupt practices. At one point, a tiff between a player and a coach escalated to a fight involving the player and a relative. That incident served as a wake-up call for the coaches.

Since then, the coaches have “weeded out the bad seeds,” as Kersey puts it, and focused on organizing a team, rather than wrangling disorganized loiterers looking for a pick-up game.

“You got to crawl before you can walk,” says Devin Johnson, an 18-year-old who had the potential to be one of Kersey’s “bad seeds,” but now attends every practice and helps coach the younger players. Johnson scored a team-high 18 points in Team Taino’s first game at a midtown YMCA recreation league. “At first it wasn’t really organized, but now everyone knows how to play with each other.”

Sherrod Kersey, a volunteer basketball coach, watches as a teen lays the ball in during a drill. “We need to look official,” Kersey says of the team as it looks to expand beyond twice-weekly basketball practices. (Photo by Jason Tomassini)

By the new year, Thomas vows,  a learning center and lounge will open above the Taino Towers gym, a place for team members to hang out after practice and a site for educational programs and video game tournaments. A teen theater production, run out of Taino Towers’ Red Carpet Theater, is slated to start by the end of January. In February, the teens will go on a ski trip and, in the spring, have a choice of baseball, golf and football clinics. A potential partnership with the Ron Brown Scholar Program would provide various classes, including leadership training that features Skype conferences with business leaders. These, however, still remain plans. And Cruz, the property manager, has even more planned. During a recent trip to her native Puerto Rico, she discussed bringing Team Taino down to play in a tournament there.

Meanwhile, architects have completed blueprints for a new $3 million fitness center at Taino, another space for youth programs, built around the complex’s pool. Eventually, Cruz hopes Taino Towers can be become a hub for teens in East Harlem.

Henry and his fellow basketball coaches are thinking more short-term. They want to enter Team Taino in upcoming basketball tournaments in the city. Their model is the Amateur Athletic Union, the top level of non-scholastic basketball; New York City boasts some of the best AAU teams in the nation. Besides basketball, Henry would like every Taino teen to have a mentor, just as he did. Martin wants to start a financial literacy course.

Whatever the future holds for Team Taino, its players don’t seem to think much beyond each Tuesday or Thursday, when they can play basketball with their friends and the worst consequences for a bad decision are running extra laps around the gym or watching an opponent put the ball through the net.

After all, it’s simple, Daquan Clarke says: “Everybody in this neighborhood likes basketball.”

For more information on Team Taino, visit www.tainoyouth.com or e-mail info@tainoyouth.com. For more information on Harlem Mentors, contact Ikay Henry at 347-756-0742 or visit www.harlem-mentors.org.

After more than two months of practicing against each other in the below-ground gym at Taino Towers, the East Harlem housing complex’s basketball team is finally getting its chance to size up against other teams. The team has entered a recreational league at the Vanderbilt YMCA in midtown, where its coach, Ikay Henry, works as a youth specialist.

“These kids want to play, these kids want to compete against other kids,” Henry says. “They want to show people that they’ve worked on something and that it’s actually working.”

For 18-year-old Devin Johnson, the YMCA league wasn’t just his first chance to play with Team Taino outside East Harlem, it was the first organized basketball game of his life. He made the most of it, ending up the star of the game.

“I’m playing for the team from the ‘hood,” he says. “It’s about our team.”

Next: As the program prepares to expand, what the future holds for Taino Towers’ youth