Football is serious business, but now the meeting was over and Haynes Smith allowed himself a smile.
“It has been a dream of mine to play football,” he said.
His dream crept closer to reality Thursday during an organizational meeting in a cavernous lunch room at the former Calumet Career Academy. The large South Side building is now the Calumet Campus of Perspectives Charter Schools, housing a middle school and two high schools; and 80 students had just heard coaches usher in what all hope will be a productive era of Perspectives Calumet football.
“This is a unique situation we have,” athletic director Vinay Mullick told his audience, 50 of whom were high school students. “You guys are lucky to get in on the ground floor of this.”
While Mullick was referring to football, his words reflect Perspectives athletics as a whole as well as the changing face of sports in the Chicago Public Schools.
Perspectives, for example, is three high schools competing as two high schools. One of the two is its well-established South Loop Campus, which does not have football. The other is Perspectives Calumet, which consists of the 2-year-old Perspectives Calumet High School and the new School of Technology, each of which occupies one floor in the three-story brick building. Perspectives Calumet Middle School uses the other floor.
Perspectives Charter Schools is part of an almost dizzying increase in Chicago’s public schools fueled by school reform. It opened in 1993 and four years later became one of the first five charter schools in Chicago.
Last year Perspectives began to occupy the Calumet building as well, and in coming years, chief education officer/founder Kim Day said, it hopes to have 10 schools.
Sports at Perspectives is not altogether typical. Perspectives promotes a culture that features what it calls, A Disciplined Life, 26 guiding principles that encourage self respect, respect for others and respect for scholarship and productivity in all areas of school life.
Students, who are admitted by lottery, take a college prep curriculum and attend school until 4 p.m.. While that cuts into practice time, sports are regarded as important because they fit Perspectives’ stress on a healthy lifestyle.
That explains why Day hired Mullick this summer as a full-time athletic director, a rarity in the Chicago Public Schools. She realizes that running separate athletic programs on separate campuses is complex, especially because the South Loop Campus has no facilities and must hunt for gyms and fields nearby.
“It has sort of been a mishmash for years for Perspectives,” Day said of athletics. “This is a chance we have to really build a quality program from the ground up.”
Mullick is just 29 but is smart and innovative enough to get the job done. The former Downers Grove South tennis player was an industrial engineer and restaurant owner before entering education through the Teach For America program.
He taught the last three years at Robeson, where he was an assistant basketball coach and academic adviser for the football team. He helped seven Robeson football players enter college this summer, which showed him how the sport fits into school reform and made him eager to start a tackle program at the Calumet Campus.
“Just participating in athletics has a strong correlation with attendance, academic achievement, discipline and kids attending college,” he said.
“A lot of Robeson kids are from single-parent homes, and the fact they had five or six adult males … coaches … in the building who were looking out for them, that constant interaction, was huge.”
More Top Picks Best Noise Canceling Headphones For Autistic Kids
Perspectives’ first football practice is Tuesday, and Thursday’s meeting dealt with everything from what to wear to permission slips.
Students from Perspectives Calumet and the School of Technology, which currently have freshmen and sophomores only, will compete as a club team this fall. Mullick hopes to advance to varsity football soon, though that depends on how successful he is raising funds for equipment.
The middle school will continue the flag football program it began last year.
Mullick’s six coaches, led by program coordinator Robert House, will focus on conditioning and basic skills, but it was clear Thursday that academics and conduct will be as important as blocking and tackling. Students must maintain at least a 2.0 grade-point average to participate, basically double the Illinois High School Association’s requirement, and coaches challenged their players to produce a 3.0 team GPA.
“It’s real simple,” line coach Scott Wold told them. “If you don’t perform in the classroom you won’t be on the field.
“We talk about a disciplined life. That goes onto the field. Whatever you hear in class goes on the field.”
That’s fine with Smith, a freshman who just wants to get there. His football experience is rec league flag football, and he longs for the real thing.
Ask him why, and he mentions how it will instill discipline and help players stay out of trouble and away from gangs. Then he gets down to the reason that’s always true, whatever the school.
“It’s fun,” he said. “It’s my favorite pastime.
“I love football.”
———-