Partnerships-Responsibility-Inspire-Discipline-Excellence
Nothing teaches lifelong lessons like participating in sports. When you become part of a team you learn that your individual effort is meaningless unless the rest of the team performs at their peak ability and the team’s effort is meaningless unless you are performing at your peak ability. This simple principle is a guiding principle in the world of First Responders also.
When Officers respond to any call they must be the consummate team mate. They must perform their part of the call to the best of their abilities, while trusting that the other responding Officers are performing their duties at their peak abilities or chaos reigns and people get hurt.
Code 3 PRIDE Sports is a program that will build on the principle of teamwork, while blending in mentorship and instilling the drive to achieve more.
The program will be based on a partnerships between Colleges, teams of multi-agency First Responders, At-Risk Teens, Collegiate level coaches and current college players as assistant coaches.
Each participating College will host both a First Responder team and an At-Risk Teen team. These two teams will practice and scrimmage together and play under the same team name. The two teams will be coached by volunteer collegiate level coaches and volunteer current collegiate players as their assistant coaches.
As these two groups practice and play together the At-Risk teens, who may never have had the opportunity to play organized sports will not only learn those valuable life lessons of Teamwork, but they will also get to see First Responders in a new light. Mentorships will evolve all around; the At-Risk Teens and the volunteer collegiate players will have the opportunity get to know and understand the men and women behind the uniforms and perhaps decide that a career of a First Responder is for them.
The collegiate players will not only have the opportunity to be mentees, but will be able to be mentors and role models in their own right with the At-risk Teens. Many of the At-risk Teens will either have been told that college is not an option for them or have never been exposed to higher education. The collegiate players will be in the unique position to inspire the At-risk teens that not only is being a college student an option, but being a college student-athlete is an option.
After practicing together for 6 weeks the First Responder and At-risk Teen teams from each school will play the other teams from the other participating colleges. The season will culminate in a championship tournament for a trophy and bragging rights.