Initiative Brings Kids to Spectacle of Game

Ten-year olds James Desgrottes and Carlos Santana couldn’t have distinguished captain Ryan Fitzpatrick from senior linebacker Bobby Everett if they’d been asked to.

But that didn’t stop the tutees from the Franklin After-School Enrichment Program and several other community service organizations from enjoying their free trip to the Harvard-Cornell football game on Saturday, courtesy of the Spectacle of Soul Project.

“My favorite play was when Cornell had the ball, and No. 27 came around and tackled the quarterback,” Desgrottes said, sporting one of the Crimson Crazies shirts procured for many of the inner-city youths by the program.

The initiative, pioneered by seniors Aaron Byrd and Jonathan Ardrey last spring, distributed over 900 tickets to inner-city football and tutoring programs this weekend in just its first week.

“They are more your inner-city kids without a doubt,” Byrd said. “We don’t so much target the less privileged. It just turns out that a lot of our mentoring and tutoring programs on campus are naturally targeted at the underprivileged kids, the kids that go to high schools, middle schools that have less quality teachers.”

That showing more than satisfied a target the two co-founders set out for themselves last spring.

In an effort to maximize student participation, the two ruled out kickstarting the program in time for the home opener in September against Holy Cross because most mentoring groups that would take advantage of the opportunity would not have started yet.

Byrd said Saturday that, despite the delay, a sizeable number of the campus extracurriculars—70 percent, by his estimate—he hopes to partner with have not yet fully gotten underway, and he expects increased participation in the weeks to come.

“It’s hard to tell,” Byrd said, “especially with Harvard mentors and tutors not being in their programs yet. It’s hard to tell who is going to show up.”

With an open-ended promise of free tickets so long as they were available from the athletics department, Spectacle of Soul moved away from handing out tickets at off-site events in the hopes of luring targeted groups to Allston. Instead, Byrd said, relevant parties were notified of tickets’ availability and asked to confirm, before picking up passes at Harvard Stadium.

“It improved our distribution process,” Byrd said. “It was a little bit more efficient...They’re here if they want ’em. As many tickets as they want.”

As expected, getting the younger crowd to the game wasn’t too difficult, with some traveling to Cambridge courtesy of their city-provided student T passes, and the others picked up in Phillips Brooks House vans driven by their chaperones.

Byrd conceded that the hopes of his program rested largely on those tutors, who already devote several hours a week to their students.

But one game in, few seemed to mind the extra time taken out of their schedules.

“It’s been good,” senior Ryan Rappa said. “I think they’re enjoying the game.”

But Rappa indicated that, despite the fun had by all, it was unlikely that his group of students would return next week due to a field trip to a science museum.

He did express optimism, however, that should tickets for another sport be offered by Spectacle of Soul, he’d be more than ready to return.

“That’s more what we look forward to,” Byrd said. “A constant supply of any kind of tickets you want, any time for free.”

And how are the more conservative fans of Harvard athletics handling the breath of fresh air? Well, Byrd said, they’ll get used to it.

“There was some tension,” he said of one particular rub up between Harvard tweed and newly christened Crimson Crazies. “But it was a good tension.”

As for the kids, they were quick to point out some of the shortcomings in their trip.

“[The cheerleaders] messed up,” Santana said of an incident during which one of the cheerleaders was nearly dropped on her head. “I don’t think they prepared.”

Still, the action on the field had the youngsters with their legs dangling over the concrete wall with just one question on their minds.

“Who is Harvard playing next week?”

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.