CSI Summer Sports Academy will feature athletic,
and academic, activities for kids
The College of Staten Island's getting into the
summer sports camp act would hardly be newsworthy -- if it were just
another week or two of sports instruction.
There's so many of these camps already that each
spring the Advance's Bob Wietecha routinely devotes a couple of his
weekly youth sports columns to camps for every sport and every age.
But the CSI Summer Sports Academy is more than a
fancy title. Open to youngsters from ages 8 to 14, it will be just
that -- an academy.
Sports -- baseball, softball, basketball, soccer and
tennis -- will be the hook, but more than half the campers' day,
from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m., will be devoted to academics: Math,
reading, writing and computer work under the supervision of CSI
College Discovery Institute instructors. In addition, all
campers/students will be required to develop and complete a summer
research project.
The concept may be new to Staten Island, but not to
CSI athletic director Harold Merritt who worked in such a camp at
Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. "My experience there
tells me there's no doubt this kind of camp is invaluable to the
kids who attend it," he said. "I've seen it help kids be successful
in school."
Merritt does admit to two nagging doubts, though.
The first is whether a summer sports academy will
fly on Staten Island.
The cost for a week --$200-- is comparable to most
sports camps which will appear in Wietecha's space.
But one academic week is all but a waste of a kid's
-- and a teacher's -- time. Consequently, a family must sign up a
youngster for the first two sessions (July 7-10 and July 14-17) and
any two of the following four sessions.
That's an $800 nut.
Merritt's second concern is that the cost will all
but exclude those economically disadvantaged kids who, as a rule,
would benefit most.
The CSI AD may have a Ph.D. after his name, but he
knows whereof he speaks: He came out of an inner city school,
Columbus HS in the Bronx.
"When I graduated all you needed to be NCAA eligible
was a 1.6 GPA that included your grades, your SAT scores and rank in
class," he said. "That wouldn't fly at all today."
Today, that wouldn't even get a student past the
Regents competency tests to graduation.
At the Mount Holyoke camp, businesses and
individuals help provide scholarships for disadvantaged kids.
That could happen here, too, although a mechanism
for selecting such youngsters would have to be devised.
First, however, Merritt has to know that the CSI
Summer Sports Academy is an idea whose time has come.
The sports camps will be held "in partnership" with
Basketball World, TS Soccer Camp, N.Y. Mets Baseball Camp, and the
Bruce Knittle Tennis Camp.
Further information may be obtained by contacting
Merritt's office by phone (718-982-3160) or e-mail (www.csi.cuny.edu/athletics).
While Merritt is not actively pursuing donations for scholarships,
he won't turn down any donations, either.
