E.J. Evans brought his game face to the Timothy Dwight School basketball courts Saturday. After a loss in the semi-finals of last year’s Dwight Neighborhood Youth Explosion tournament, he came back ready to go all the way. But Evans recognized that the tournament was not all about winning: “I like it because when there’s nothing else to do, it keeps us out of trouble,” he said.
(Click here to watch video of the event shot by Empower New Haven’s Tom Ficklin.)
Begun last year by the Dwight Central Management Team Youth Concerns Committee, the annual 3‑on‑3 basketball tournament and cookout and provides an opportunity for Ward 2 community members, both young and old, to come together at the neighborhood level. Kids from various middle schools and high schools in the area joined community leaders, parents, and friends for a fun afternoon of basketball and barbequeing.
Youth Concerns Committee Chair Gina Calder, who organized the event, said the easiest part was finding kids who wanted to play: “I just stop kids in the street and tell them about the tournament. They have literally nothing to do during the summer, so it’s not hard to find them.” Much of the reason the tournament is important to the community, Calder said, is to give teens something to look forward to and keep them busy busy when they are not in school.
More difficult, however, was finding enough sponsors and volunteers to put on an entire tournament. The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven donated $2,000 to Calder’s committee for three different youth initiatives, the first being the tournament. The second two initiatives will be more academically focused and will involve youth in the organization and production of the events as well. Calder said she thinks it is the responsibility of the adults in the community to provide kids with structured activities to keep them off the streets and away from violence.
Local politicians also used the event as an opportunity to spur a voting drive. When they were not cheering on the basketball players, Ward 2 co-chairs Greg Smith and Mark Griffin spent the afternoon encouraging adults to register to vote if they had not already. But while Smith said he wants people to know their votes count, he maintained that the driving force behind the event was to provide a support system for young people in the community: “Many of the problems with violence that have occured in New Haven happen in this ward, and we felt it was time to get out in the street and save our youth,” he said.
After volunteers spent an hour distributing uniforms and the players warmed up, the games ensued. The rules — read out by Che Dawson, former executive director of LEAP — were simple. Teams of three, half-court games, 10 minutes each, single elimination. In round one, E.J. Evans’ team, the Diplomats, tipped off against Southside, while on the other side of the court, the 99s challenged the Heat. There was a middle school and a high school bracket.
The 99s, comprised of three experienced high school basketball players but newcomers to the tournament, was confident they would take the high school bracket from the start. Rajai Leggett, B.J. Givens, and Mike Massey all play for their varsity teams and joked that they would have “no competition” on the court. Leggett explained the origin of his team name: “Because we got 99 problems.” He added that he thinks the tournament has a positive influence on the neighborhood’s youth: “It keeps us out of trouble — for the moment at least,” he said.
Indeed, the 99s did take home the championship trophy, and although half-joking about getting back into trouble, Leggett might have been on to something. Many of the volunteers at the event stressed that the tournament is a positive alternative activity to keep the community’s youth off the streets, but once a year is not nearly enough. Griffin said the Dwight Central Management Team is hoping to hold more events throughout the year based on talking to the kids and hearing what they want. Because there has been a spike in violence the past couple summers in the Dwight neighborhood, Griffin said Ward 2 should serve as a model for New Haven initiatives to save the youth. Management team member Curlena McDonald agreed: “Our philosophy is not that there is nothing for these kids to do, but we need to find more for these kids to do.”