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June 2001
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New York City
July 2002

Building Fields, Building Character
By Tom Kertes

The crumbling athletic fields of New York City Public High Schools haven’t had public funding in 25 years.

Shocking, isn’t it? And this is only made more shocking by the fact that New York City has the highest percentage of students not participating in physical activity; that the City has the highest percentage of child obesity and other health problems of any major American city; and that it has the highest percentage of school absenteeism, while athletics has always been known to serve as the great equalizer when it comes to school attendance.

Based on the principle of “better late than never”, three powerful New York personalities—New Jersey Giants owner Bob Tisch, urban planner Richard Kahan, and community activist Tony Kaiser—have decided to respond to this sorry situation. The result was the formation of Take the Field, a private-public partnership aimed at fixing public athletic fields.

“The pilot program, established two years ago, was a three-to-one challenge,” said Executive Director Mary Musca. “Take the Field was going to raise $4 million if the City provided $12 million.” The program was such a sizzling success—seven horribly damaged fields have already been fixed up—that, a year ago, then-Mayor Giuliani said in his State of the City address: “I’ll make sure any field they want to fix will have funding.”

Twenty-one fields are slated to be completed by the end of the summer, including the ancient athletic facility at Brooklyn’s South Shore High School. “It hasn’t been as much as touched since 1970,” Principal Steven Berger said. “It is a mess.” Remarkably, in spite of the horrible conditions, South Shore has been fielding outstanding, sometimes even nationally ranked, football and track teams for years.

In fact, it was the great track team that
caught the attention of John Whitehead, the former chairman of Goldman Sachs. An enormous track and field fan all
his life, Whitehead decided to team up with Take the Field to give a leg up to South Shore by putting up a significant portion of the cost of the $4.5 million project personally.

“High school athletics are a very important part of a young person’s development,” he said. “Among other things, it keeps them away from temptations that are all over the city.”

The building of the new athletic complex, which shall bear Whitehead’s name, has been a tremendous boon to the school and its 2,600 students. “They’re ecstatic,” Berger said. “We have a great deal of athletic prowess at the school—and now we’ll have the facilities to match that.”

Whitehead had nothing but praise for the efforts of Take the Field. “There are important lessons to be learned through playing sports, in leadership, discipline and character,” he said. “I hope this organization merely scratches the surface right now. There’s so much more to be done.”#

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All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of the publisher. © 2002.


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