Mathabane’s educational trials and tribulations started in the fall of 1978 when he started school at Limestone College in Gaffney, South Carolina. Adjusting to academic life and his constant worry about his family safety back in South Africa took its toll on Mathabane and his tennis performance. To top matters, he lost his passport. He was very unhappy with the team and coach; he applied to Central Florida Community College. He changed his mind to stay at Limestone but the tennis voted to eliminate him from the team. Central Florida also changed their minds and he did not go there. With Stan’s assistance, they sought out St. Louis University for a scholarship. Even though a scholarship was promised, in the end no scholarships emerged. Stan
Joes High School’s total enrollment consisted of sixteen girls, and twenty boys. Ten of the boys that had enrolled there played basketball. All of the boys were over six feet tall. Lane Sullivan, the new coach of the basketball team, had never even touched a basketball before he started coaching. Sullivan had never coached anything at all before he started coaching the Joes basketball team. In order to gain knowledge about the sport, he got a book about it. He started coaching in 1927, but before the 1928 basketball season, Joes High School didn’t even have a gym. Instead, they’d practice outside on a dirt court, and two times a week they’d take a bus to the nearest gym, which was ten miles away. In order to play home games, the boys had to play in the local dance hall. The “court” was nowhere near regulation size, and the ceiling was so short that the boys couldn’t shoot an arched shot. The people who attended these basketball games had no place to sit and watch the game, the all stood around the edges of the court and on the small stage. Joes High School finally got their own gym around Christmas time because the people of Joes donated their time and material in order to make it happen.
Gawande talks about how he came up with the idea of hiring a coach to watch him perform surgery after an experience he had playing tennis. Years of playing the game and not improving, Gawande incidentally finds himself play tennis with a young man who is a tennis couch. The young man gives Gawande a tip about keeping his feet under his body when hitting the ball. At first he is uncertain, stating, “My serve had always been the best part of my game…..With a few minutes of tinkering, he’d added at least ten miles an hour to my serve. I was serving harder than I ever had in my life” (Gawande, 2011, p.3). Gawande is so greatly impacted by this experience that he decides to hire a coach to help him with is professional endeavors.
Have you ever had someone that you look up to? There is somebody that lots of students at West Delaware look up to that teaches a lot of things. This hero has taught everybody in general many things involving, school, sports, and to be a good person in general. Brett Mather, my hero, is a coach and a teacher at West Delaware High School. Coaches strive to make students and athletes better people on, and off the court. Mather does an amazing job with that.
A young African-American boy walks onto some rundown tennis courts at a local park with his father in Richmond, VA. Armed with an old wooden racket and a can of white tennis balls, his father begins to feed him some different shots and tells his son everything he knows about tennis. Being an African-American, this young boy did not have many friends that were as interested in tennis as he was. Since tennis is a predominantly white sport, Arthur Ashe’s desire to play was not encouraged by either race, but instead of giving up on the sport he loved, he continued playing to the dismay of many. Little did Ashe know, however, that his persistence would change the game forever. His efforts opened doors for many of the popular African-American tennis players, such as Serena and Venus Williams, MaliVai Washington, and Bryan Shelton. The class that he brought to the game of tennis and the bravery he showed by changing a sport dominated by whites made Arthur Ashe a legend in his own time.
1. Twice in the story education is referred to as "a white man 's education." What do you suppose is meant by this term and what is the impact the term has on the story (think about characters)? I think “a white man’s education” could mean two things. It could mean something that is highly desired to get ahead in life. “It is the only key that can do that, and only those who seek it earnestly and perseveringly will get anywhere in the white man’s world” (Mathabane 429). His mother seemed to believe this and desired an education for him as she believed that he would not break the cycle of poverty and abuse they were living in without it. On the other hand, it could also mean something that held the black South Africans back. His father believed this and did not want Mathabane to be educated. “He refused to go to school because his father led him to believe that an education was a tool through which white people were going to take things away from, like they did black people in the old days” (Mathabane 429). Since his father believed this, he was willing to abuse his wife and son so that his son would not attend school.
DiSalvo, Jack, and Theresa Foy. DiGeronimo. College Admissions for the High School Athlete. New York: Facts on File, 1993. Print.
(Argan). However, there is an obvious doubt to whether he is really sick or if
Serena Williams: The embodiment of success. She keeps me hungry for more, both on the court and in the classroom. Whenever I failed a math test for the first time this year, I thought of when she makes a mistake and how she drills her flaws in practice so that it surely will not happen again. Reflecting on this, I did worksheets, watched Khan academy lessons, and mastered the content until 3:30 a.m. on the morning that I was retaking the math test, and received a 100%.
In the life of McCandless, he went to college, and graduated with a GPA of 3.72. He was given a large amount of cash for college purposes, and he donated that. He had an offer of a new car for himself from his parents. He had a clear path for himself that was set by his lo...
Mary is very active in school activities such as clubs and softball and tennis. She is very coordinated in her sports and also very fast. Mary was just offered a full scholarship to play tennis at State University.
Venus Williams is arguably the greatest African-American tennis player in the history of the game. Winning 17 singles titles in the Southern California 10 and under championships, she was featured on the front page of the entire paper of The New York Times. At age 10, she was described as “the most hotly pursued preteen in U.S. tennis history”. However, the sudden rise of Venus to prominence was surrounded with gender equality and racial associations. Despite all that, Venus was the centre of attention for the media during her prime. Sports Illustrated called her, “a brilliant new talent – witty, intelligent and charismatic – a streetwise child of gang-plagued Compton, who could be the Tiger Woods of tennis”. Venus was a “Party Crasher” and she was definitely a tennis prodigy.
Whether or not we want to acknowledge it, what we do now reflects our future. And with the facet of education and future preparatory, I find this probably one of my favorite message throughout Coach Carter. First, Coach’s focal goal was to tell these boys that they don’t have to end up on the street, dead or in jail. He wanted them to know that after basketball they could do something with their lives. He told them “I will do everything in my power to get you to college and a better life.” Another show of explaining my interest towards the educational division of Coach Carter was how Coach was explaining to the boys how "This is a system designed for you all to fail,” when referring to the education system at Richmond High School. I had to really ruminate on this comment. Coach clarified that Richmond only graduated 50% of their class. And of that 50% only 6% go to college. He told them “you’re 80% more likely to ...
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance man that was born in 1452 and lived to 1519. He was a true renaissance man is regarded as one of the greatest minds of the renaissance era, displaying skills in numerous diverse areas of study. While he is most famous for his paintings such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, Leonardo is also renowned in the fields of civil engineering, chemistry, geometry, mathematics, mechanical engineering, optics, and physics, Making his biggest contributions to mathematics and engineering through his amazing inventions. Leonardo da Vinci was very far ahead of his time which is why most of his inventions were not made practical until someone reinvented later in time, when technology caught up to his ideas.
After reading Hallway Hangers, a sense of the complex relationship between poverty and education is gained: it a dualistic one. In some views, education is a means out of poverty, yet those who grow up poor often have different opportunities, hopes, and experiences in their school years. During my time thus far at Colgate, I have participated and watched many sporting events on campus, and found that local families attend and cheer with as much enthusiasm as the students. Similarly, on National Athletes appreciation Day last year the Student Athletic Advisory Committee (SAAC) ran a program at both the elementary and high schools in Hamilton, providing question and answer periods for the students and giving them skills clinics. The tremendous respect that I felt that the students gave me was overwhelming, not because I was just an athlete, but because I attended Colgate University. While observing the sporting events and the community outreach programs I realized then that Colgate is a virtual mecca for this area. So a double standard is evident: the presence of a relatively prestigious college is no doubt an inspiration to local students; but the reality of the matter is - how many of these youths could, and would, achieve a college diploma?