Kentucky reign, part II

Sporting News, The, April 15, 1996 by Richard Lapchick

I had a very good feeling watching Kentucky cut down the nets after its Final Four triumph in the Meadowlands. Not only had the Wildcats completed a great season with genuine teamwork, but they also come from a university that has developed a progressive athletic department under the leadership of Athletic Director C.M. Newton.

The title game of the NCAA Tournament took place in the same week as National Student-Athlete Day, which honors the achievements of student-athletes in the classroom and community.

That may have been harder to do when National Student-Athlete Day began nine years ago amid a significant number of scandals in college sports. One of the major scandals involved Kentucky basketball in the era of Eddie Sutton. Kentucky blue turned red as the national embarrassment forced changes in the athletic department that was then. Have a look now Newton and his staff have initiated the changes. I know about some of them firsthand because Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society is the provider of the programs I am going to describe. We offer them to schools that join the National Consortium for Academics and Sport of the 117 members, each school uses the programs in different ways. Kentucky is one of the few schools that uses them all. Here are some of the biggest concerns about college sports and what Kentucky is doing about them:

* Athletes don't graduate. To join the consortium, you agree to bring back student-athletes in revenue sports who had not graduated when their eligibility expired. Kentucky was bringing its athletes back before it joined and became one of the first to expand this to include all men's and women's sports. It has aggressively contracted former student-athletes and invited them to return.

Kentucky also has one of the nation's most sophisticated academic advisement programs, led by assistant athletic director Bob Bradley. That program makes sure current student-athletes have a chance to graduate with their original class.

* Athletes are spoiled and selfish. Another condition of membership in the consortium is to establish a community-service program that uses past and current student-athletes to help children. Many members have tried to reach as many young people as possible to help tackle the crises faced by American youth. From the start Kentucky's emphasis has been on concentrating on fewer students with more intensive programs. Kentucky student-athletes have been mentors for elementary and high school students. They initiated the acclaimed CopyCats Pen Pal Program to encourage elementary school students to read. They have spoken to dozens of community groups and volunteered at hospitals.

In fact their program has been so outstanding that when the Center and the Consortium applied for (and later received) a nearly $1 million AmeriCorps grant to create four expanded community service sites, Kentucky was almost an automatic choice for one. Northeastern, Nevada and Canisius became the other sites, which are designed to help prevent violence, improve race relations and help young people achieve seemingly unattainable educational goals.

Since October, 15 former and current UK student-athletes have worked full time with Lexington children in the program, which is called Athletes in Service to America.

* Athletes socially segregate themselves according to race. Contrary to one of the obvious goals of sports, blacks and whites on many teams drift apart when they leave the court or field. Kentucky has made progress in this area.

Kentucky Coach Bill Curry has one of the best reputations among black players in college football. And Rick Pitino surely shook up college basketball a few years back when he named Bernadette Locke-Mattox, a black woman, an assistant coach. That was a whole other kind of diversity for college sports. Locke-Mattox now is the women's basketball coach at Kentucky.

The Center has provided Project Teamwork diversity training for administrators and coaches in 28 athletic departments to build bridges over the racial divide. Kentucky has taken it further than anybody by providing the training for all of its student-athletes.

* Athletes are more inclined to be violent. While I believe this is a stereotype much like the selfish dumb-jock image, Kentucky took no chances. Its student-athlete diversity training program also has the provision of conflict-resolution skills. The training program for the Athletes in Service to America had the center's Mentors in Violence Prevention gender violence prevention training component.

Like many Consortium schools, Kentucky has not been afraid to use a new vision to charge its student-athletes to become leaders on society's toughest issues, including racism and gender violence.

It was clear to fans that Kentucky was on top of its game when it won its hard-fought championship April 1 against Syracuse. But Kentucky's overall athletic program also was no April fool when it came to National Student-Athlete Day last Saturday.

With two superb performances in one week, Kentucky is proof you can win titles on and off the court.