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Tennis was dead in this city. These kids are bringing it back.

By Barry Carter | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

10-year-old Courtney hits the ball during tennis practice in a free program offered by Greater Newark Tennis & Education at the Althea Gibson Tennis Complex in Newark’s Branch Brook Park. (Charles McKenna)

Just beyond the large statue of Althea Gibson, a throng of kids eager to play the game she dominated fill up nearly 18 courts named after the tennis icon.

It’s a Wednesday evening, one of four days they practice at Newark’s Branch Brook. There’s no time to waste, either. They’re up on their toes with a bounce in their step, anticipating the direction of balls tossed at them from instructors at the Essex County Althea Gibson Tennis Complex.

This rarely happens at the courts, unless there’s a high school tournament, and there aren’t many. Hardly anyone from the neighborhood, which borders Belleville, plays there, either, making Newark a tennis desert like many urban communities.

Not anymore. This organization – the National Junior Tennis and Learning of Trenton – started a Newark chapter three years ago with a free program for kids in the city and surrounding communities. Since then, the Newark members of the group moved on and formed the Greater Newark Tennis & Education organization.

Under the new name, the program is still free, receiving funds from private donations and corporations. While financing is a challenge, the program is flourishing.

It started with five kids and finished with 70 after the first year. Now 130 are registered, but on any given evening, 50-55 kids learn the game for two hours Monday through Thursday and for another two hours on Saturday morning.

“We want to give kids the idea that there is a bigger world beyond than what they may know,” said Charles McKenna, the executive director of the program.

Camps big. University big. Globally, big. That’s how far the organization wants them to go.

Historically, they get to learn that Gibson, an East Orange resident in her later years, became the first African-American to win a grand slam title, the French Championships in 1956. The following year, she won Wimbledon and the Nationals, which was precursor to the US Open, then did it again in 1958. Overall, Gibson won 11 grand slam tournaments, including five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title.

The courts where the kids play were named after her by Essex County in 2002 and the statute was dedicated in 2012. Dozens gathered, including Gov. Chris Christie and tennis great Billie Jean King.

“Greater Newark Tennis & Education continues Ms. Gibson’s legacy by bringing the game of tennis to a new generation of players and using the game to help develop tomorrow’s leaders,” said Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo.

And, if all goes right, this program could be the impetus to spark a comeback of the game in city high schools.

Bob Bynum, a Newark native and the program’s lead instructor, would love to see that happen. He’s always wanted to be part of a tennis program in Newark, having taught the game full-time in suburban communities since the 1980s.

Kids get ready to practice tennis during a free program offered by Greater Newark Tennis & Education at the Althea Gibson Tennis Complex in Newark’s Branch Brook Park. (Charles McKenna)

“This is a dream come true. Newark has always been close to my heart,” said Bynum, a South Side High School graduate, who played his first tennis tournament on these courts in the 1970s.

He remembers when Newark high schools had teams, but they dissipated over the years because there were no feeder programs to bring kids into tennis.

“That’s what we’re trying to do,” he said. “We’re hoping that some of these kids who go to high school in Newark will be able to rekindle the tennis programs.”

So, they’re starting them out young. Most of the kids are 5 to 12-year-olds, but the program teaches kids up to 18. The participants are mainly from Essex County, and have taken to the game, learning from Bynum’s staff, which numbers about 13 instructors, who are high school and college students and parent volunteers.

The kids want to play and have improved. Jason Honore, 11, said it was hard at first when he started three years ago. He had no control over the ball, his strokes sending it high over the net. Practice change that.

Bob Bynum, lead instructor of Greater Newark Tennis & Education, talks to kids who participate in the free program that started three years ago to get young people in the city interested in the game. (Barry Carter| NJ Advance Media)

“Sometimes when you hit the ball really well, you say, ‘I hope that can be my knew normal,’” he said.

His older brother, Julian, 13, said he is motivated by playing against good players to get better.

Ten-year-old Darren Cordero, 10, of Belleville, agrees. He hasn’t beaten Julian, yet, but is looking forward to that day. He’s really into the game, too. After spending all day in summer camp, his parents said he’s on them to get him to the courts on time.

“He doesn’t miss a day,” said Lewis Cordero, his dad.

The Whitest brothers – Marvin III, 12 an Courtney, 10 – like tennis so much that their dad, Marvin Jr., brings them from New Brunswick. They take the train, getting off at the station across the street from the courts.

“It’s good for me, too,” Marvin Jr. said. “It helps me get back active. Now, I’ve gotta hit with my boys. They want to show they can play.”

All of the kids, whether they know it or not, have breathed life into the community. People stop to see what’s going on. With their play — the program runs until October — perhaps others will take up the game and use the courts.

NFL Linebacker Tahir Whitehead Celebrated by Newark West Side Community

By: Mike Kinney | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com | March 23, 2018

Giving everything he’s got has always seemed to be a natural inclination for Tahir Whitehead in all matters football related.

Giving back, on the other hand, is an acquired gift.

The NFL linebacker has been known around the Newark West Side High community for some time now as a big-hearted benefactor of youth sports in his hometown – as well as a revered member of the school’s 2007 state championship football team who went on to some very big things in the sport.

Whitehead sponsors the Youth Annual Football Camp each summer for free to city youth Grades K-12 and he has purchased equipment for the high school’s weight room. Even though he now resides in the Atlanta area, Whitehead also still makes routine visits to his old stomping ground to offer insights on education and teamwork to current Roughriders hoping to follow his path to success.

The teamwork part? That’s always come easy for Whitehead, according to his high school football coach, Brian Logan, and to just about anyone else asked to comment on the football star Friday during Tahir Whitehead Day ceremonies Friday at the West Side gym.

But the education and the social benevolence aspects of his life? Whitehead thanks men like Logan for opening his eyes to those worlds.

“When I first got to high school and first met Coach Logan I saw how big of a heart he had,” Whitehead said. “That motivated me to come back and give back seeing how much he did for the guys on the football team and the people in the community. Not only was he a police officer for 25-plus years, but he was dedicated to being an amazing human being, and that motivated me to emulate that.”

Whitehead’s success and the generous way by which he has shared it motivated many to join hands and honor the former West Side and Temple University star. It began, first, by renaming the West Side weight room the Tahir Whitehead Fitness Center and then awarding him with numerous proclamations from city, Newark Board of Education and Essex County sources before his No. 4 high school jersey was retired before a cheering student body at the West Side gymnasium.

After helping West Side win the North Jersey, Section 2, Group 3 championship in 2007, Whitehead starred at Temple for four years and graduated one semester early with a degree in criminal justice in December 2011 (that point, incidentally, drew raucous applause from the students). He played the last six years for the Detroit Lions after being drafted by that organization in the firth round in 2012, and just last week signed a three-year contract worth $18 million as a free agent with the Oakland Raiders.

Wealth. Athletic fame. A beautiful family. An enviable package, for sure for a kid from the gritty streets of Newark’s West Side. And it seems that each new measure of success in Whitehead’s life brings a moment to reflect on the lessons handed down by Logan and his staff at West Side.

“Coach Logan (who now is head coach at Weequahic) showed us all that community service is key. And not just by telling us and having us going around the help the less fortunate, but by his actions,” Whitehead said. “Having young men that were struggling in their lives actually come live with him in his house with his family, that right there was big-time for me. This man taught us that giving back like that was always bigger than you personally.

“I made a promise to myself to do exactly the same thing. Help as many people as I can while I can.”

Whitehead showed great talent as a football player in his Pop Warner days, but existed in that world somewhat in the shadow of older brother Quaheem Whitehead, a Newark Pop Warner legend and West Side star himself who graduated in 2006.

The older Whitehead was part of the crew that brought respectability back to the Roughrider name on the gridiron. Tahir, Anthony Baskervile, Jonathan Quallis, Carlos Cox and others advanced that several steps further and brought championship hardware back to South Orange Avenue.

But widespread notability was no guarantee for Tahir, who was considered a touch too small for linebacker and perhaps an academic risk by most colleges. He received exactly one scholarship offer, from Temple University.

“I’ve always been an underdog, always had a chip on my shoulder,” Whitehead said. “It was my only offer, but it was an offer. I was gonna show everyone that I am good enough. I was gonna show them all that I could play at any school in the country.

“But it was a blessing in disguise. Going to Temple, I really felt appreciated there. They chose me and they could have given that scholarship to anyone else. I was grateful and went in there with the mentality that I’m gonna work my tail off and make sure I pay it back.”

Additional Media Coverage

‘It’s starting to hit me,’ Newark graduate gets ready for Harvard

By: Karen Yi | kyi@nullnjadvancemedia.com | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
[Newark, NJ] Kim Boerrigter can’t stop smiling when she talks about it.

The 18-year-old graduate of Malcolm X Shabazz High School, pushes back her brown hair hanging a few inches over a T-shirt that reads: “Straight off to Cambridge, MA.”

Boerrigter is going to Harvard University this fall — on a full scholarship.

“Now the days leading up to it, it’s starting to hit me,” Boerrigter said. “It’s mix of excitement and just being really grateful to have this world-class education and I don’t have to break any bank accounts to get it.”

She was the valedictorian of her class with a 4.2 GPA, presented novel enzyme research at the largest earth and space science conference in the world and is an avid reader of Edgar Allen Poe.

But she admits she loves playing video games, too, and geeked out when parts of the Harvard campus resembled the Great Dining Hall from Harry Potter.

“They had stained-glass in the freshman dining hall,” she said. “And like chandeliers.”

In the months since her Harvard acceptance, Boerrigter has received an outpouring of support from the city: Municipal resolutions supporting her achievements, widespread congratulations on Facebook and a $2,500 donation from a stranger whose mother was a Newark teacher.

“Once it hit me, that the whole, literally the whole city was coming together over this, I thought it was really the most wonderful thing,” she said. “Usually the whole neighborhood comes together for candlelight vigils at Penn Station when god forbid something bad happens but now that I could be the reason for the whole neighborhood coming together and it’s a good thing — my heart skipped a beat.”

‘Science is life’

Born in Germany, Boerrigter came to Newark when she was 3 years old and was raised by her mother. Her father is Nigerian but not involved. She said she knew she wanted to be a forensic pathologist since she was 12 (she watched a lot of NCIS).

“I’ve always had an interest in all my science classes,” she said. “It’s fascinating to me, the fact that we are here and the planets exist, that life exists the way it does, that all these conditions are so perfect to the point that we could be having these conversations right here and the very fabric that we’re made of not being ripped apart, science is life.”

For Boerrigter, perseverance is everything. She’s kept up her German and is fluent, and convinced her mother to let her live a year in Germany with her grandmother when she was in the third grade. At Shabazz, she spent nearly two hours every other day seeking more knowledge from her math teacher Patrick Murray during his planning periods. He helped her conceptualize math and how to apply it to science.

“When I’m in class and I don’t understand something, it bothers me to not know,” she said. “I don’t just want the A, I want to know how I got it and what I need to do to get it.”

Murray said Boerrigter was instrumental in the school’s Bio-Geo-Chemistry Team that traveled to the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco to present their cutting-edge enzyme research. Andrew Steen, a professor at the University of Tennessee, is publishing a manuscript using much of the novel data, Murray said.

“She’s doing graduate level science without all the coursework,” he said. “She’s going to be the one who writes the protocol (forensic pathologists) use … she’s going to shake this stuff up.”

Boerrigter leaves Tuesday for her freshman orientation and says she’ll miss the city she grew up in, including her favorite staples: Vonda’s Kitchen and Sabor Unido.

She sees her career path, though, as one that could one day have an impact on communities like Newark. She hopes to major in human evolutionary biology, go to medical school and advance the field of forensics to help bring closure to families who have lost loved ones.

“I see it as a public service and it’s something I can give back to people,” she said. “Many of my friends have been to more funerals than they should have at the age of 18 and so when you don’t even see some of your peers being able to graduate from high school … that’s some closure that people will never get.”

‘It worked out nice’

About 5-10 Newark students are accepted into Ivy League schools every year, the school district said, but some can’t afford to go.

Boerrigter said she’s lucky for the opportunity. Without the scholarships she couldn’t afford Harvard’s $65,000 tuition. Her mother often works 12-hour shifts as a home health aide.

“Me coming from traditionally environments where people don’t seem to have the availability of resources, I just find it amazing that I’ll be able to do all these great programs and not have to worry about where the next meal in school is coming from,” she said.

She applied to 22 schools and was accepted to other prestigious universities like Johns Hopkins.

Harvard wasn’t always on her mind. In fact, Boerrigter said it wasn’t until some family friends suggested she apply that she decided to try.

“It worked out nice,” she laughs.

Shabazz Rides Momentum From Historic Season Into State Tourney

By: Richard Greco | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

The Shabazz baseball team poses for a photo following its last regular season game.
(Photo Courtesy of Ryan Cordero)

As an eighth grader, Ronaldo Espinal remembers watching a struggling Shabazz team getting 10-run ruled on a consistent basis. Now as a senior, Espinal has been a crucial piece in the program’s turnaround and helped bring the Newark public school its most successful season to date.

Shabazz won the Independence Division title, the program’s first divisional championship. It went 12-1 against divisional opponents and finished the regular season with a 17-9 record. Shabazz also advanced to the second round of the 85th Greater Newark Tournament, which is the furthest the program has made it.

“It was really important,” Espinal said. “In the summertime, I play for teams with kids from Barringer and Bloomfield Tech, but they always looked down on me just because of the fact that I played for Shabazz. Now we are on the same level.”

The program has blossomed under Shabazz coach Ryan Cordero, assistant coach Dan Barcia and former assistant coach Kevin Arroyo. For Cordero, who is a social studies teacher at the school and has been with the program the past eight years, seeing Shabazz reach this milestone is a testament of all the hard work that his staff and players put in through the years.

“There was a lot of hard work that came in this program,” he said. “It comes down to the kids first and foremost. We have to believe in them. At the end, they believe in you too and start to earn your respect as crazy as things may get.”

Most of Cordero’s seniors have been on the varsity squad for the past three years. In a neighborhood where baseball isn’t the dominate sport, fielding a quality team is no easy task.

“In the South Ward, there’s a good baseball player that’s in the streets or doesn’t make it to his 12th grade year because he’ll drop out or just doesn’t want to play baseball anymore,” Espinal said. “Every year, the rate of baseball players in the South Ward goes down. For us to gather enough players that are talented and take the conference that’s good enough for me.”

Making fielding a team even more difficult is the fact that Shabazz isn’t know for its baseball program. Instead it is a football and basketball school. It’s women’s basketball program flourished under legendary coach Vanessa Watson and its football team advanced to the North 2, Group 1 final this past year.

Getting its baseball program on the map is something that Shabazz alum Odanis Rodriguez, who graduated in 2012, is very proud of.

“This program has come a long, long way,” Rodriguez said. “I give a lot of props to coach Cordero. He brought this team from nothing. We were always on a losing streak and always in a slump. He made it happen with this team. They look really good. It’s a different ball game they’re playing now.”

Sparking this season’s success has been Espinal, Al Shakir Evans, Genaro Falcon, Ashad Garat, Shamont Mercer, Lamont Oliver and Tahji Smith.

Shabazz hopes to continue look good when the state tournament gets under. Shabazz received the fifth seed in the North 2, Group 1 tournament and will host 12th-seeded Weehawken in the first round on Monday.

View the story on nj.com.