Young Camden coach has inspired others, but doesn't have money to stay in college

As Argenis Calderon's face has appeared on movie screens in New York City and across New Jersey, audiences have watched him play baseball in Camden's Pyne Poynt Park, navigate a tumultuous home life, graduate high school near the top of his class, and prepare to attend college.

Since then viewers of Pyne Poynt, a documentary released this year about the North Camden Little League, have often approached Calderon at screenings, some with tears in their eyes, to tell him that his story inspired them.

His local fame led to a job with the Camden County police department, where he works two nights a week as a class one Special Law Enforcement Officer. For the second year, he is a volunteer coach for the baseball league that protected him from trouble when he needed it most.

But Calderon feels less certain of his future than he once did. He ended last semester with failing grades, due in part to time he spent attending training for the police job. He can't yet register for fall classes at Rutgers University-Camden because he owes money from last school year - about $8,000 that he believed was covered by state financial aid, but which Calderon recently learned wasn't coming because he didn't turn in all the required paperwork.

"I've never failed like this, ever," Calderon, now 20, said last week as he watched his teenage team practice on one of Camden's fields. "I messed up real bad. Everyone knows me as the kid who wants to keep pushing myself. I just don't want to disappoint people."

Calderon spent part of last week meeting with administrators at Rutgers. They told him they want him there and are trying to help him secure more financial aid, he said.

Steve Patrick Ercolani, the Haddonfield native and freelance journalist who directed Pyne Poynt along with journalist Gabe Dinsmoor, has set up a donation website for Calderon, www.gofundme.com/henni. He plans to discuss Calderon's troubles at the next public screening of the film, which will be Monday at 7 p.m. at the offices of WHYY, Philadelphia's public radio and television affiliate.

The film, which premiered in April at the New York City Independent Film Festival, follows the lives of a handful of North Camden Little League players and coaches. Ercolani and Dinsmoor filmed on and off for three years, shooting most of the footage over five months in 2014, and documented the transformation of North Camden's Pyne Poynt Park from a haven for drug addicts into a field of baseball diamonds overrun with kids. Since its release, it has been shown in Collingswood and Camden, most recently at the Campbell's Field baseball stadium.

"With all the recognition the movie has given me, I want to use that to make something of myself," said Calderon, who was the subject of an Inquirer profile last summer as part of a series on the North Camden Little League.

Camden school officials have said that securing the financial and academic support required to complete a college degree is a struggle for even the city's brightest and most motivated students - as well as for students across the country.

Calderon grew up in East Camden with three younger siblings and a mother who works as a hairstylist and a house cleaner. His father is in federal prison for selling drugs. The stepfather who raised him was also a dealer, and left the family in summer 2014 after a violent confrontation with Calderon's mother, a week before Calderon started attending Rutgers.

Last spring, when Calderon learned of the opportunity to train to work with the police, he thought that he couldn't pass it up. Well-paying jobs for students are hard to come by, he said, and he believed he could balance the necessary training with studying and finals.

"I feel like I dug myself a hole," he said. "It hurts me to even talk about it."

For his job, Calderon spends 12-hour night shifts at a police substation in the city, mostly checking equipment in and out, listening to the dispatchers, and doing occasional patrols around the outside of the building. It's given him a better understanding about what police officers go through, he said. Almost every night, he hears 911 calls reporting someone with a gun.

Calderon started college as a major in urban studies, but whenever he gets back to school, he plans to switch to social work. He wants to devote his life to working with kids like the teenagers he coaches.

"I can get those good grades back that I used to have," he said. "I don't care how long it takes."

Tickets for Monday's Pyne Poynt screening are available for purchase at eventbrite.com/e/pyne-poynt-at-whyy-tickets-26458935388

asteele@phillynews.com

856-779-3876@AESteele