Harvard Alums Help Underprivileged Youths With Football Camp

In Kyle Walczak’s house sits a brick. But this is no ordinary brick, given to no ordinary high school student. In the summer of 2011, Walczak attended 4th and 1, a football camp designed to help underprivileged high school football players improve skills both on and off the field. The brick, a memento that Walczak received from his time at the camp last year, symbolizes more than just time spent at a summer camp, however.

“At camp, we talk a lot about this concept of building a wall, one brick at a time,” says executive director of 4th and 1 and Harvard Law School alum Vivian Chum. “It’s from a Will Smith interview about how his father tore down a wall and made Will Smith and his brother rebuild it one brick at a time. In his life, he thinks about his success by laying down a brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid, one brick at a time. We talk about, every single time, moving towards a bigger goal by laying down that brick.”

In a letter that Walczak wrote to the camp, he talked of the hardships he was going through at home: “I look at my brick often because we recently lost our house because my dad lost his job. I brought my brick to my mom’s home and told her that this is my foundation, [this will] keep me strong. She will not let me down. Just as 4th and 1 did not let me down.”

For Walczak and countless other high schoolers who may never have the chance to attend an expensive football camp, 4th and 1 has made a huge impact. Along with training from former NFL players and college football coaches, the camp—held yearly in Michigan and Texas—provides guidance in areas in which ordinary football camps may lack, such as SAT preparation and resume writing.

“It pretty much changed my entire life,” says 4th and 1 student athlete Trey Rivera. “Before I hit 4th and 1, I didn’t care about school. I thought it was a waste of time, honestly, but when I started to get more into [the camp], I started realizing that it’s not all about football; you’re going to get tests if you keep playing. What it showed me was that people care about you, and they want you to pass.”

But Rivera and Walczak might never have gotten this opportunity if two law school alums hadn’t had a chance meeting years after their graduation.

ROOTS IN CAMBRIDGE

Daron Roberts didn’t have a typical start to his career. After graduating from the Kennedy School and the Law School, Roberts decided to pursue a different passion—football.

“It was in the summer of 2006, when after working in a couple of law firm jobs, some buddies of mine from my high school football playing days asked me to travel with them in working football camps,” Roberts said. “I did, and I had the best time of my life…. That experience re-ignited my love for football, so I decided to graduate from the law school in June of ’07 and pursue a career in coaching.”

Roberts did just that, taking an internship with the Kansas City Chiefs before becoming an assistant coach with the Detroit Lions. It was during his time in Detroit that Chum, writing a feature for ESPN, interviewed Roberts, her former floormate in Ames Hall at the Law School.

“He started telling me about his vision for a camp and really from there, it kind of grew out of our discussion,” Chum said. “For a while, when we were developing the idea for this camp, we had phone calls almost every single night, and we just talked about the things we wanted to have at this camp. That was early 2010, and then by July 2010, we had a camp. It was very much that once we had an idea, we had to do it.”

Roberts and his sister had previously run a similar camp in Texas, The Next Page, that provided standardized preparation for 15 at-risk minority students, so the idea of running a camp in his hometown in the Lone Star State wasn’t a foreign one.

“I thought about combining the philosophy, the mission of The Next Page with football to create a football camp that would include life skills development, SAT and ACT preparation, as well as football skills training, and I went to the same community college where my sister and I had founded The Next Page,” Roberts said. “I went to the board and asked for funding to start a one-week program in which we’d be preparing 30 at-risk students from the East Texas area. The board approved the measure, and we had our first camp in Mount Pleasant, Texas, in the summer of 2010.”

MORE THAN FOOTBALL

For one week each summer, 40 high school students, ranging from rising sophomores to rising seniors, pour onto the campuses of Northeast Texas Community College and Michigan State University, ready to learn new football skills from experts in the sport.

But to advertise this camp as purely a football camp, free to all of its attendants, would be incorrect.

“For us, the football is kind of the draw,” Chum said. “It is a fun part of the camp, but really we’re only on the field for a couple of hours a day. What we do emphasize is the teamwork and the discipline, those elements of sports that help you be successful, and we transfer that into the classrooms, so in the classroom, if student athletes are having difficulty understanding concepts, we may have someone talk about it in the context of football.”

For Rivera, football enticed him to apply, but he quickly found that there was more to the camp than just the sport.

“We were looking for a football camp,” Rivera said. “We didn’t have money to go to a football camp because there were some very expensive camps. I found 4th and 1, and it was pretty great when I found it. I’m just in love with football, but it was also about the SAT. When I was there and didn’t know something, they were there to help me. They give you the skills to do what you need to do to get to college, and it was such a wonderful experience to actually see people who care about you from all across the country.”

From about 200 applicants to the Texas camp, 4th and 1 accepts roughly 40 students who show “promise,” according to Roberts.

“Our philosophy is that the top football players in the country are accounted for in the system because of their athletic talent,” Roberts says. “It’s the student athlete with the average football skills, average academic skills, so we’re searching for the “average”-type student, and with a disadvantaged background, whether it be coming from a single home or part of a minority group, we want those kids to come. We want the camp to serve as a boost that will propel them into their senior year and also into their undergraduate career.”

The camp day begins with football practice in the morning, followed by a variety of workshops and SAT preparation classes led by volunteers and teachers, many of whom are Harvard alums or undergraduates.

“It is amazing to see the students progress through the week each year,” says Daniel Adler ’10, SAT Director for 4th and 1. “Most of their parents aren’t as savvy about the college admissions process as most Harvard students’ parents are, so they really have to do a lot more stuff on their own. So it’s very fulfilling to try to help them out to try to give them some of the advantages that I was lucky to have growing up.”

INTO THE FUTURE

The camp offers not only guidance to its attendees, but a lifelong personal connection to 4th and 1’s directors and volunteers.

“Each counselor takes a handful of students that they’re supposed to keep in touch with during the year, but it’s a two-way street,” Adler said. “Sometimes the counselors could probably do a little better job, sometimes the students could do a little better job, but we’re working on keeping that communication open throughout the year so it’s not just a one-week camp and then they forget about it for the next 51 weeks, and then they show up again.”

The brains behind the program are also working to expand and improve upon 4th and 1 in hopes to better the effects of the curriculum on its campers.

“I introduced [the Jacksonville Jaguars] owners to the camp,” Adler said. “From day one, when I started talking to the Jaguars about this job, my boss [Tony Khan] came across 4th and 1, and he was immediately really interested. When I came on as a secondary thing to my real job, we had talked about trying to launch 4th and 1 here in Jacksonville.”

The plans for the camp in Jacksonville include practice SAT tests on Saturdays and team-donated tickets to the Jaguars’ games on Sundays for the campers. The hope is that these efforts would maximize participation throughout the year rather than limiting the program to a summer schedule.

The camp in Jacksonville will also be unique in that the team will actually provide all of the funds to sustain the program.

“Last year, the Jaguars donated a bunch of shirts,” Adler said. “This year, with the camp in Jacksonville, they would be funding the entire thing.”

The program’s directors also look to increase participation from volunteers, recruiting from 4th and 1’s strong alumni network.

“Now that we have a significant pool of alumni, we are starting to integrate the alumni into our programming for the summer,” Roberts said. “We’re bringing our alumni back, and they are now helping to lead some of the writing courses, they’re helping to provide our current 4th and 1 student athletes with tasks such as crafting a resume, so we’re now cultivating futures within the program among the student athletes who can return and help the younger generation.”

Because 4th in 1 is such a new program, the directors and volunteers will be the first to admit that the past couple years have been a gradual learning experience, with each new year’s success surpassing the last.

“I feel like the camp is really growing and developing and becoming better as we all grow and develop and become better,” Chum said. “At the very end, we focus on, from here, what are you going to do? How are you going to stay in touch with your mentors? What are you going to commit yourself to in the year ahead?”

—Staff writer Samantha Lin can be reached at samanthalin@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @linsamnity.

—Staff writer Kelley Guinn McArtor can be reached at kelleyguinnmcartor@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @KGMCrimson.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: Feb. 9

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the year in which high school student Kyle Walczak attended youth football camp 4th and 1. In fact, Walczak went to the camp in the summer of 2011, not the summer of 2012.