Centennial College will offer free basketball league, educational tutoring at Ashtonbee

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A program starting this month at Centennial College is using the lure of basketball to provide some Scarborough youngsters with an exposure to post-secondary education that they might not otherwise have had the opportunity to experience.

Called Play It Smart, the pilot project is in its first year and will offer a mix of school tutoring, basketball practice, games and mentoring for 160 children ranging in age from seven to 13. The program will run from the end of this month until March on Sundays at Centennial's Ashtonbee Campus.

Vern Kennedy, a Scarborough resident and business teacher at the college, was inspired to come up with the basketball program based on the work his friend, Claude Nembhard, had done in North York and is now doing in York Region.

"We have wonderful facilities at Centennial and they should be used by the community," Kennedy said. "We needed to make them available to kids who may not have the opportunity to play basketball."

However, there will be a lot more than just shooting hoops going on at the Ashtonbee Campus for the program's participants.

Along with teaching basketball skills and providing age and gender-appropriate leagues at the college for the youngsters, the program will also help its young participants experience a college in a way they might not have been able to.

Kennedy pointed out that most of the students he teaches at Centennial grew up in situations in which education and the idea of continuing it past high school was the accepted norm. He realized that was not the reality for many youngsters living in some of Scarborough's more challenged neighbourhoods.

"I'm worried about these young kids who don't see a post-secondary future for themselves, and have not been exposed to colleges and universities."

He's hoping that the Centennial students who have volunteered as educational tutors and basketball coaches in the league will serve as role models for the young participants and make them realize that attending a college or university is a possibility.

"I'm hoping our students become heroes to them and an inspiration for these kids," Kennedy said.

And to make that happen, the college is pulling out all the stops to make participation in the free program as easy as possible for local youngsters.

Every Sunday starting on Sept. 21, buses will travel between the Malvern Town Centre and the Ashtonbee Campus to take the young basketball players back and forth. The kids will be supervised during the bus rides and looked after by Centennial student volunteers at the campus.

The bus for seven, eight and nine year olds leaves at 9 a.m., arrives at Ashtonbee about a half hour later and then sees the youngsters given 30 minutes of grade-appropriate tutoring prior to a break for a snack, which the students bring from home. The youngsters then split the remaining hour between a basketball practice and a game.

They will leave at noon and should be back at the Malvern Town Centre about 20 minutes later.

Similar schedules will be followed by the other participants, with the oldest group of youngsters leaving the college to return home at about 5 p.m.

"The tutoring will have learning outcomes and the kids can also bring their homework assignments and they will get help with that," Kennedy said.

The basketball component will see leagues of four teams each broken down by ages, with co-ed competition up to the ages of 11. The 12 and 13 year olds will be split into boys' and girls' basketball leagues.

Kennedy admitted it has taken an enormous amount of volunteer commitment from Centennial students who break up the day into shifts. "There's a two-hour maximum for the tutor volunteers," he said.

He added that the Centennial Student Association has been extremely supportive of Play It Smart.

"We've had a wonderful response from the students so far," Kennedy said.

The college administration has also been critical in getting the program off the ground as there is obviously a cost for the buses and maintenance of the campus being used, he said. In particular, he said, it couldn't have happened with out the help of David Johnson, dean of the School of Business, and Scott Abraham, also of the School of Business. "They have put a heck of a lot of work into this," Kennedy said.

There is a limit of 160 youngsters who can be accepted into PLay It Smart for this year. Kennedy said the interest is already growing, especially in the Malvern area where the buses will leave from.

Anyone wishing more information about the program, or how to register for it, is asked to call 416-289-5000, ext. 3273.