Decades ago, I recorded a story whose message I will never forget. I had lunch with two inspirational young women who, in a period of only two years, took Cincinnati's Taft High School women’s basketball team--which had disintegrated in mid-season the prior year--and turned it into the champion in its league.
More than achieving a winning record, their story conveys the good that caring, determined leader and strong relationships can produce.
The names of the two young women are Angela and Rhonda. Both are graduates of Taft High School which is located in and serves one of the poorest parts of Cincinnati.
Angela was one of nine children, four of whom were born out of wedlock. She respected her mother but acknowledged she had to “work the system.” Her mother was murdered and Angela raised her two youngest siblings. A teacher convinced her that she could go to college. She became a coach at Taft.
Rhonda also went to college after graduation and returned, desiring to give something back to Taft. She loved athletics and was a good basketball player. She went to the Athletic Director of Cincinnati Public Schools. She told him she wanted to bring back the Taft women’s basketball team. The Director said it was hopeless. “The girls have changed since you have been at Taft,” he said. “They’ll never come to practice. They wouldn’t stay with it.”
Rhonda pushed back. Eventually, the Director said, “OK, give it a try.” And she did.
Now, Rhonda and Angela have the only freshman basketball team in the City of Cincinnati, a JV squad of ten players and a varsity squad also numbering ten.
Taft came out first in its league this year. They lost to its competitor, Withrow, by 30 points in the first game. By the time they came back to play the second game, they won by 3 points.
As Rhonda and Angela say, they don't do this so much to win as to give these girls a life.
It wasn’t easy at first when Angela and Rhonda went through the lunchroom spotting young ladies who they thought should be on the team. The girls tended to “blow them off. "They said they would come but then not show up". The sequence was repeated. Finally, the young ladies saw that Rhonda and Angela meant business. They weren’t about to give up. It was the same thing if they were late for practice. “If you’re late, you’re going to do a lot of running drills.” The girls started to arrive on time. To me, it sounded like the Marines.
For Rhonda and Angela, it was all about “giving back." In their words, “We want to be able to look back years from now and see how we may have been able to prevent a teenage pregnancy or help a girl go on to college.”
These life histories bring forth the reality that everything is about relationships. High expectations, high standards, hope, a sense of possibility, powered by persistence. People like Rhonda and Angela make the world a better place. Never have we needed more people like Rhonda and Angela than we do today.
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