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Sports figures offer playbook to success

Symposium for student-athletes

At symposium yesterday, Todd Ervin (left) and Andre Iguodala field questions from student athletes. (Kriston Bethel / Staff)
At symposium yesterday, Todd Ervin (left) and Andre Iguodala field questions from student athletes. (Kriston Bethel / Staff)Read more

Kendall Anderson got the message yesterday when he and more than 200 other boys heard from a panel of sports stars and other leaders in business and entertainment who were imploring the kids to stay in school and out of trouble.

"It's encouraging," said the Bodine High School sophomore after the town-hall-style meeting at school-district headquarters.

"I haven't been doing well in school, it'll make me challenge myself to do better."

The students from the city's public and charter schools were there for the forum "What It Takes," organized by a local science-based program and aimed at minority high-school boys.

The boys were asked to sign a pledge of commitment to their studies and were challenged to do well by a panel of several prominent men, including Sixers' shooting guard Andre Iguodala, Eagles' fullback Leonard Weaver and Keith Houlemard, who's behind Nike's Air Jordan brand.

The students were plied with prizes - two students won Xbox consoles during a raffle - and promises.

The student with the best attendance and highest grade-point average at the end of the first marking period will get tickets to the Pro Bowl, in Florida, said Anthony Martin, founder of Urban Youth Racing School, which sponsored the event.

Meanwhile, audience members gave former heavyweight boxing champ Joe Frazier, who was invited to attend but was not on the panel, a standing ovation.

James Brown, host of "Inside the NFL," moderated the symposium, during which panelists fielded questions ranging from how to avoid pitfalls of living in tough neighborhoods to picking up girls.

In response to a student's question about the importance of school, Weaver said that without education most football players wouldn't cut it on the field.

"We have a playbook that lists about three, four hundred plays that we got to know by heart, and the only way that you're going to know [them] is knowing how to read, understanding numbers with mathematics," he said.

Iguodala, who fancied himself a good student, suggested blurring the lines between school and street life.

He remembered encouraging his own classmates, who crunched "numbers" on the street, to apply the same concept to their studies.

"If you do the same thing in class that you do on the streets, you'd ace every test," he once told his peers, and now reiterated it to the young audience.

Feedback was positive.

"It gave me more confidence," said Evander Barkley, 17, a junior at Benjamin Franklin High School, who added that he wants to major in business management once in college.

Scrawling his signature on the pledge, Barkley's schoolmate, senior John Butler, 18, said that the testimonies he heard reflected his own.

"Most of the stuff they was saying I could relate to," he said.

"It opened my eyes to some new things. I won't give up."