Posted: 06 Feb 2011 08:19 PM PST

Children didn't want to cross the Division Street bridge. Bad things would happen.

The Oceanside bridge arches over Interstate 5 and links territories claimed by two rival gangs: Varrio Posole Locos and Center Street.

So kids in the Crown Heights area that rings Oceanside High School faced two choices: They could hide in their parents' apartments to escape the tension, violence and drugs on the street ---- or they could join one of the gangs that claimed their neighborhood.

"We've had kids who had never seen the beach before," said Rhiannon Riecke, after-school program supervisor for North County Lifeline, a social services nonprofit. "They were afraid to go out of their neighborhood. They were scared to death to cross the bridge. They knew the other gang was on the other side."

That was eight years ago, before North County Lifeline's program started to take root at the Crown Heights Resource Center, teens and gang-prevention specialists said. The program has since cobbled together funds from the city of Oceanside with grants from the state and charities.

The nonprofit agency will get a cut of a state grant awarded this year to Oceanside and other cities with gang problems. It also is using a grant from United Way to teach kids how to fill out job applications and manage money.

The program makes a real difference in the neighborhood, said Oceanside police Lt. Valencia Saadat, who oversees the department's gang unit.

"The (kids) on the borderline, you have a chance to say (to them), 'There's a whole other life out there,'" she said. "You know what you're taught. If you're right there (in a gang-claimed neighborhood) and not exposed to anything else, you really don't see there is something else out there."

About 40 to 60 kids show up after school on weekdays at the Crown Heights center. Up to 45 more show up every day at the group's center in the San Luis Rey neighborhood.

"For those three hours a day," Riecke said, "they get to be normal kids."

Grants fund program

Oceanside received a $369,309 grant this year from the Governor's Office of Gang and Youth Violence Policy, which the city must match.

Half of the money will pay for extra enforcement ---- more cops on the streets in gang-claimed areas, for instance. The rest will go to prevention and intervention programs, including Lifeline and Vista Community Clinic.

A state panel chose Oceanside based on the city's number of gang-related crimes and other factors. It was one of 24 cities chosen from 36 that applied.

Barbara Moreno, 47, runs the program at the Crown Heights Resource Center.

Moreno said that about eight years ago on her first day on the job, she saw a young child pull a gun out of some bushes across the street and hand it to police.

She soon learned that the kids who came to the resource center had seen a lot of ugliness in their own neighborhoods, but little else. They had never been to the beach or the library or even the park.

So Moreno, who has been working at after-school programs in North County for 31 years, and others at the center took the kids to the beach and places such as Disneyland ---- a first for most of the kids.

Of all the places she has worked, she said, she loves this the most.

"It actually makes me feel like every day, I'm making a difference," she said, her eyes welling with tears. "These are my babies. If I don't see them come back on a Monday, I'll go looking for them. They're my kids."

Outside the center, children played with jump ropes, footballs and playground equipment on an artificial-grass lawn. Inside, others worked on homework, ate snacks and chatted at one of several tables. Board games waited to be picked up.

Teens there told stories about their neighborhood that held to themes of confinement, terror and numbness. But there were also seeds of hope.

'There were always fights'

Adrian Jimenez, 17, has earned good grades in high school and has applied to engineering programs at several universities. He said he dreams of attending the University of Southern California and plans on being the first in his family to go to college.

As a child, he was nervous about going to the supermarket. His older brother was then a gang member and would often run into rivals there.

"You can't even go to the store when other people are there," he said.

Someone would whistle at his brother to get his attention and then throw up a gang sign. A tense standoff would follow that sometimes led to fighting.

"As long as I could remember, there were always fights," he said.

That way of life never appealed to Jimenez, so he instead retreated to his home after school and stayed inside playing video games, he said.

When he was 9 or 10, he started coming to the resource center. He could play outside with other kids and get some encouragement.

They even crossed the bridge on Division Street to go to a pool once considered forbidden territory.

'I couldn't go anywhere'

Maria Madrigal, 18, used to go to the Crown Heights Resource Center after school. Still, she struggled to stay out of the gang lifestyle.

She recalled trying to walk to the beach with her ex-boyfriend ---- a gang member ---- five years ago when a group of men rushed them with baseball bats. They beat her boyfriend while Madrigal watched and screamed.

It became clear that if she and her friends were caught in the wrong place, they ran the risk of being attacked.

"I couldn't go anywhere," she said.

She kept hanging out on the streets with her gang-member friends. She saw fights all the time, but felt like she had nowhere else to go.

"At first, it was kind of scary," Madrigal said. "But I just got used to it."

She often struggled and stumbled at the resource center, but some of the lessons she learned there stuck with her.

After Madrigal left high school, she signed up for medical assistant school, even though she thought she'd never finish.

Last week, she said she was stunned to realize she was just a couple of months away from graduating and just got her first car. She showed it off to Riecke when she was picking up some of her young relatives from the resource center.

"I used to think I was never going to make it," Madrigal said.

But she credited Riecke, Moreno and others at the resource center with planting another idea in her head:

"I learned you can be whoever you want if you just put your head into it."

Call staff writer Brandon Lowrey at 760-740-3517.

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Kids These Days: Geno Auriemma On The Rigors Of Recruiting

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 10:57 AM PST

UConn coach Geno Auriemma ended his media session Saturday with an interesting and educational riff on how recruiting has changed over the last 10 years. It was a pretty fascinating look inside the UConn mindset when its coaches walk into a gym.

If you are an 8th grader reading this, I would pay special attention to what Coach Auriemma is saying. It may mean the difference between having a steak or a hamburger someday on the night before a game - among many other cool things UConn players get to experience.

Class is in session:

"I think what's happened in the AAU world in the last 10 years or so is kids don't play to win,'' Auriemma said. "They just play to play. They show up at a tournament on Friday and play a couple games. They play four or five more on Saturday, then play all morning Sunday before the leave.

"The difference when you watched Maya [Moore] play was Maya played to win every game and every possession. And it sticks out so obviously because everybody else was just running up and down the floor waiting to get in their van and stop at McDonald's and go home. And she's never played like that, and neither did Kelly Faris or Tiffany Hayes.

"You try to find those kids that aren't just running up and down playing. They're trying to win. All summer long, 90 games ... They're trying to go 90-0. And not every kid wants to do that, and Maya does. And, hopefully, we can keep recruiting kids that are like that."

On how his coaching philosophy may have changed over the years:

"I'm at an age in my life now where if I say, `I want you to go and do that' and the kid says, `Why?' Then I don't want you. There's a lot of kids coming out of high school today that you have to explain why you want things done. I'm not in the mood to explain why I want things done. If I recruit you, and I say `this is what I want you to do' then you just do it."

Auriemma told a story about being a game in Illinois with DePaul coach Doug Bruno where they noticed how lazy the players seemed to be on the floor.

"We looked at each other and went `they all know we're here. There's nobody sitting in these bleachers but us. And these guys are dogging it.' If you're not going to play really well now with us two sitting in the stands when are you going to play hard?'

"We're constantly looking for kids that you just have to point to something and they go. And I think that's why we win all the time. Those other coaches have to take chances [on kids]. If I was trying to build a program now, or trying to get to the level that we're at right now, I'd probably take more chances on kids and I'd probably fail more often than not. So I'm fortunate. I don't have to take that kid if we don't want to. So it makes recruiting way harder for us.

"People think recruiting is easy for us. Recruiting is harder for us than it is for anybody else. There's only five kids in America that can play for you. When you think about it."

Team effort for kids

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 10:13 PM PST

February 06, 2011|By Mike Newall, Inquirer Staff Writer

Tatyana Tokley was nervous about playing on her first basketball team. As she waited to take a practice shot on the crowded gym floor, she fidgeted with the yellow nylon scrimmage jersey the coach had given her. She didn't know many of the other middle schoolers in the Camden City Catholic Basketball League. The girls came from different schools.

She ran to the hoop using the form she had learned practicing with her uncle in the park. The ball circled the rim but did not drop. Tokley glanced at her mother, on the sideline.

Jessica Robinson, 28, waved to her daughter from her spot on the gym floor, where she sat because all the seats had been taken.

"This is such a big day for her," Robinson wrote in her journal as she watched the warm-up last Sunday afternoon.

Tatyana had insisted that they get to the Rutgers University-Camden athletic center a half-hour early. "Mom, I don't want to miss anything," she said.

Tatyana dreams of being a professional player, but in Camden, just getting an opportunity to learn basketball can be a challenge.

On the other side of the gym, Judyann Gillespie was dishing out balls and organizing teams. Gillespie, 38, an adolescent-counseling director in Camden, runs the all-volunteer league, now in its sixth season. Her father coached her Catholic Youth Organization basketball teams as she grew up in South Jersey. When he died in 2005, she searched for a way to give back to her adopted city.

"Kids here deserve the same opportunities other kids get" is her motto.

Until a few months ago, Gillespie was unsure whether the boys and girls would have a place to play this season. For the last few years, they had played at a private gym in Camden, but that club hiked its fees to about $8,000 for the three-month season. "I was in tears," said Gillespie, who saved the season by negotiating a lower price with Rutgers-Camden.

The league survives on donations, she said. Gillespie raises about $3,000 a year; the Camden Rotary Club and some local businesses help out, and she throws beef and beers.

"Six years, and it doesn't get any easier," she said.

Just renting the court eats up most of the scant budget.

On game night, there were no uniforms for the 100 or so kids - just the nylon jerseys - and, since the league cannot afford trained officials, Gillespie pulled referees from the sidelines. It costs extra to pay for the bleachers to be pulled down, so the kids and their fans mostly sat on the floor. Luckily, someone had donated a rack of balls.

Kids Games

Monday, February 7, 2011

“OCEANSIDE: Police, community give kids alternative to gangs” plus 2 more

“OCEANSIDE: Police, community give kids alternative to gangs” plus 2 more

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