Found: On the court, off the street
By DJ Summers
On Syracuse’s west side, the Boys and Girls Club of Syracuse offers a venue for the Amateur Athletic Union to play a league game away from bad influences.
Dennis Crosson’s step-son plays in the AAU where Crosson says the 10th-grader will avoid the unpleasant reality of street life and poverty so many on the west side know.
“These kids here,” Crosson said, “maybe one in ten of them won’t be around in just a few years, you know?”
The Syracuse branch of AAU, directed by coach Shawn Pudney, provides Central New York youth an outlet many lack. There, the old Boys and Girls Club mainstays of athleticism and teamwork inject structure into unstable lives.
“A lot of us, where we come from there isn’t a lot of unity on the street,” Crosson said. The father says even if a home life is stable, it doesn’t lessen the impact of street and school.
“They’re exposed to all these other things,” Crosson said. “Then they come here and they’re a positive part of something, not a negative part of something out there.”