Thursday, the Dayton Flyers guard once again met the challenge.
This time, instead of on the basketball court, it was in the Hidalgo Room on the ground floor of the Frericks Center where he was surrounded by three other UD players and a dozen seventh grade boys who are part of the Connor Kids Academy.
They were gathered for a frank, speak-freely session about life, not just sports.
The personal, sometimes profound 45-minute session was moderated by Terry Nelson, the former Cincinnati Bearcats basketball player who played briefly for the Harlem Globetrotters, coached high school basketball and, among other pursuits, has spent 25 years as a radio and TV analyst of UC basketball.
Nelson tossed various personal questions to the UD players — with Allen, there was Nate Santos, Isaac Jack and Jaiun Simon — and soon asked them to reflect on someone who really stepped in and put them on the right path in their life.
Allen answered first…and best:
“I’d say my dad, but I didn’t realize it until I was older. I love my dad, but there was a time where I was like ‘I HATE you!’
“I was like ‘Why you so hard on me? Why you come against me?’
“I was probably nine and he was making me wake up at 6 a.m. When we were having a game and playing bad, he was going for the other team. I was angry and crying and yelling, ‘Why you doing this?’
“He admitted later he wasn’t perfect — he was learning to be a father figure — but I realize now how he was shaping me, molding me.
“He was like 16 when his dad was murdered, and he wanted to make sure I had it better than him. He was preparing me for life.
“Now, whenever I face adversity, he’s the person I come to. He gave me my foundation. Now he’s like my best friend,”
Allen paused and looked at the young boys around him, all of whom were hanging on his every word.
“I know some of you have coaches who get on you and you’re like ‘Oh man! ' But they ain’t got nothin’ against you,” he said. “They’re just trying to prepare you for the future.”
When Allen finished, there was silence — a rarity whenever a dozen seventh grade boys are in the same room — and then Nelson whispered: “I liked that, Bro.”
So did 12-year-old Jayden Muhammad, a seventh grader at DECA Middle School, who sat next to Nelson, wide-eyed and, at times, open-mouthed as Allen had shared his upbringing.
“I like how he pushed us to be the best we can be,” Muhammad said later. “Everybody here tries to help us be something more.”
During the session, Larry Connor — whose vision and subsequent efforts were the key to launching the Kids Academy four years ago and now has seen it expand to programs involving the University of Cincinnati and University of Louisville basketball players and their cities — had slipped in unannounced and sat in the back of the room.
He nodded and said quietly: “Right there is what this is about.”
The Connor Kids Academy is a unique, three-year program that runs year-round and helps under-resourced boys — grades five through seven — achieve habits and skills for life-changing personal growth and enrichment.
While basketball may be the initial draw, this is no hoops camp.
“Sports is the anchor, but the real purpose is about two other outcomes,” Connor said. “It’s about making good choices and healthy living.”
Asked for examples, he thought a second, then offered:
“Well, good choices could be things like: Are you going to stay away from potential self-destructive activity? Criminal activity. Drugs. Things like that. And instead engage in positive pursuits, whether it’s sports, academics or other hobbies.
“We just want them to think about choices and be exposed to good ones, rather than bad.
“As for healthy choices, they could be something like: Am I going to drink water instead of a 24-ounce soda? Will I eat some fruit and vegetables instead of fast food?”
To develop those concepts, the Connor Kids Academy not only has an event filled, three-day gathering in the summer — like it did this past week on the UD campus and in June at both UC and Louisville — but there also are one-day gatherings in the fall and at-off campus settings in the spring.
Along with that, the Academy has a specially designed app that participants have committed to using multiple times per week during the entire year.
It has 365 days of different content and includes work-out videos, inspirational stories, interviews, goal-setting activities, and ways to track your habits and share your thoughts.
Each year — as the boys move up a grade and leave the Academy — 30 new fifth graders are added, so at any one time there are 90 participants in the program.
Alex Klein, the former Denver school teacher and principal who came out of Duke University with magna cum laude credentials, is the Director of the Connor Kids Academy. He regularly visits 10 to 20 grade schools in participating cities to explain the program and get suggestions for applicants from school personnel.
The camp is free, but kids must make a commitment that includes agreeing to use the app at least three days a week and to attend the summer, fall and spring sessions.
Klein said around 75 percent of all participants are using the app regularly and many boys are doing activities on it daily.
Of course, there’s a built-in incentive, too.
Participants earn points every time the use the app and when they accumulate enough, they can go to the app store and use their cache to purchase items like sports gear and other equipment.
“Once a week I’m shipping stuff out to the homes of 7 to 10 kids who have earned items,” Klein said. “It’s pretty special.”
Even more so is the real reward from the venture.
“I get anecdotal feedback all the time from parents,” he said. “One mother sent me a text telling me how, for the past three years, she’d tried to get her son to brush his teeth twice a day.
“She said, ‘He’s been in your program a month and because he gets 25 app points every day he brushes twice, he does it every day.
“‘This has been life changing for me.’”
‘Kids are our future’
Connor is the founder and managing partner of The Connor Group, his nationally-recognized real estate investment firm which owns and operates a $5 billion portfolio of apartment buildings across 12 states.
The success — along with an abundant dose of derring-do — has enabled him to become an adventurist like no other in the area. Once known for racing all types of vehicles, climbing mountains and braving whitewater rapids around the globe, he has taken his exploits to new heights — and depths — in recent years.
Three years ago, he dived to the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean — reaching 35,856 feet in the Mariana Trench — and a year later he piloted a flight to the International Space Station.
Last year he set a Guiness world record for a HALO jump (high altitude, low opening) when he and a team of special ops personnel jumped from 38,067 feet — 7.2 miles above the earth’s surface — joined hands in a formation, then hurtled 190 mph downward before opening their chutes.
Next up he plans to dive to the Titanic wreckage.
But just as impressive as all those feats — and more impactful for people here — have been his philanthropical efforts, most often geared to under-resourced children.
The Greater Dayton School he recently opened at Deeds Point is best known, but the Connor Kids Academy is making an impact in much the same fashion.
As Nelson, who does a lot of work with youth as well, put it the other day:
“Look, you can’t take what you’ve learned to the grave. You’ve got to be able to pass it on to the next generation.”
Connor agreed:
“Kids are our future. They’re the key to everything in the next 10, 20 and 30 years.
“But the problem with that — the reality — is that some kids have a lot more access and resources than others.
“In our view, we just want to make it more of an equal opportunity. We want to level the playing field.
“And the more we looked at it, the more we realized that the younger we can interact with them, the better.
“As we were figuring out how to do that, we knew we already had an affiliation with the University of Dayton and we knew kids like sports. So that could be the means to get us to the concepts we hoped to develop.”
He said UD — from athletics director Neil Sullivan to basketball coach Anthony Grant — bought in whole-heartedly.
He stressed this is not an NIL — Name, Image Likeness — deal where athletes are being paid to participate.
“Anthony’s belief was that this is good for the kids, and it’s also good for his student athletes,” Connor said. “The kind of players he wants are ones who see this as an opportunity and a responsibility to engage with kids.”
Connor said it’s been the same with Wes Miller at Cincinnati and Pat Kelsey at Louisville.
He said he hopes to expand the Academy to a minimum of three more cities over the next three years.
While several schools would like to join the program, he said they must make a full commitment and some applicants did not and were turned down. Among the rejections are two name programs in the region.
Brady Uhl, the fifth-year guard at UD, has been involved with the Kids Academy since it launched at UD four years ago.
“We know we’re role models in the community and the kids look up to us as someone they want to be like,” he said. “And we know the importance of this program and what it teaches kids.
“It’s about growing up and being a man. It’s about building good habits; being a good friend and a good teammate. It’s about making decisions and healthy choices.
“Basically, it’s just about finding a way to succeed in life.”
Real-life examples
When Klein took on the directorship of the Connor Kids Academy, it enabled his wife Brittany, a Miamisburg High grad before becoming a Denver teacher, to return home.
Connor said the ongoing growth and success of the Kids Academy is a credit to Klein and many others who have helped.
He praised Gregg Darbyshire, who operates G3 Marketing and Pro Camps, and has been the operational sponsor of the camps in Dayton, Cincinnati and Louisville.
Among the many people helping out this past week were area coaches Dwayne Chastain Jr., the former Thurgood Marshall hoops star who played at Sinclair and Glenville State and is now an assistant coach at Wayne High; and Larry Pointer, the basketball coach at Belle Haven Elementary.
The three-day camp at UD — which ran from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily — was the equivalent of a three-ring circus with things going on everywhere you looked.
Besides the basketball drills and games, there were five different classes — they call them Chalk Talks — that taught specific lessons:
The importance of picking good friends.
How to be a good man.
The importance of having a routine.
Owning up when you mess up.
Connecting the list of ingredients on a food package and the healthfulness of it.
There were guest speakers — including Anthony Grant and UD players Zed Key and Javon Bennett —and tours of the UD campus.
There also were three meals a day for each camper.
As for the seventh graders, who would be graduating out of the Academy — they got that final, heartfelt sharing with the UD players, who fit perfectly into the program, Klein noted:
“They’re 18 to 24 years old, so they’re nearly peers. But they’re old enough that they’ve accumulated wisdom and life experiences and, by virtue of playing at UD, they have the ‘cool factor’ that our 9 to 12-year-old boys really want to listen to.”
And while all the players shared stories, it was Allen who again stood out.
When Nelson asked players to share a story where they messed up, Allen told of a night when he was a sophomore in high school and was hanging out with guys with whom he’d grown up.
They were out late and went into a Dunkin Donuts at 5 a.m.
“We weren’t doing anything, but we had our hoods up and we were wearing back packs,” he said. “All someone saw was black men late at night and they called the police.
“The police came in, put us on the ground and put us in handcuffs. Right then I’m thinking, ‘No matter what, I put myself in this situation.’
“I didn’t know what the other guys were into, but I had a career in front of me and I didn’t need to jeopardize it. I didn’t need to be there. I needed to be home or in the gym but not there. Not at 5 a.m.”
He said that was a lesson in picking your friends and your situation.
“That’s real,” Nelson said.
And when the session ended, he reminded the seventh graders: “Look, these guys went deep with you in here. That was good…Real good.”
As Larry Connor put it earlier:
“Right there is what this is about.”
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