This is the second story in a three-part series looking into the athletic programs of the Recovery School District.

Brian Bordainick got home from his first day of work at Carver and was stumped.

Photi by Bradley Handwerger / WWL-TV.com

New Carver head coach Shyrone Carey is intent on rebuilding the school's football program.

The first-time athletics director had to figure out how to start a basketball program from scratch by December, less than a month after taking the job in November.

It didn’t take him long, despite the fact that Carver doesn’t have a gym or any permanent building to hold classes.

“The whole community has been so supportive of everything,” Bordainick said. “The Desire Street Ministries said, ‘Use our gym. Here’s this. Here’s that.’ It’s just been a matter of putting that all together.”

Carver isn’t the only school struggling to put athletics on an even playing field with other schools in a post-Katrina world. The entire Recovery School District has yet to find level footing with schools that have been back since the storm.

But Bordainick and other coaches and administrators have ideas about how to get the programs back on track.

And community involvement leads the way.

Rallying the community

If there’s one common denominator when talking to RSD coaches, it’s that community involvement will be integral in getting the programs back up to speed.

That’s easier said than done for some schools.

Carver is one that’s having an easier time than others.

“I’ve yet to meet a vindictive person that I’ve come into contact with in the community or the athletic office of the RSD,” Bordainick said. “You can make excuses. We don’t have a gym. We don’t have a track.

“The truth of the matter is (that) it’s all bullshit. Yeah, we don’t have that. But what we do have is people who care and I’ll take people who care over resources any day.”

Getting neighbors involved is seen as a key piece in moving ahead. How to do it, though, is the big question.

For Rabouin head football coach Wallace Foster III, it’s all about getting his face out in the community.

“In my situation, I knock on doors, talk to parents, do everything I can to introduce myself to my people,” he said. “I’m saying, ‘This is who I am. This is what I’m doing. This is what I’ve done.’ I’m just saying help support me.”

Foster believes success starts at home, and building positive relationships in the neighborhoods that feed his school is where it all begins.

“It only takes two or three guys to bring guys in,” Foster said. “That’s what I want to build up here. By me living in the community, I can sit on the porch and my football players can pass me at my house going to the corner store and I can see kids walking around. They identify me. I’m on the right track, but I need more.”

But it’s not that easy for all.

“Everybody wants to be a part of something, good or bad,” Reed boys basketball coach Bernard Griffith said. “Once you get that going, it builds and it feeds. It grows. That’s where we’re all at a disadvantage – trying to get a community base going again.”

Only 53.8 percent of population has returned to New Orleans East neighborhoods, but that area sends the most students to New Orleans public schools, according to research done by GCR & Associates. At 2,813 students, that’s 1,000 more students than the 7th Ward, the second-highest producer of public school students.

Both of those neighborhoods have seen less than 65 percent return rate as of fall 2007.

The more those neighborhoods fill back in, the better chance for communities to find a bond with their schools.

Win and they will come

It sounds so simple – win a few games and fans and players will come.

Yet, it’s hard to win when so few players are coming out to play sports at RSD schools.

That doesn’t matter, Clark’s head basketball coach said.

“My philosophy is you coach the ones through the door,” Terrence Soulny said. “You may not have the quality, but you bust your butt and you go forward.”

Added Cohen girls basketball coach Gerald Grandpre, “I tell them a 1,000-mile journey starts one step at a time. Just look for a lot of small victories. Winning one quarter, that’s a small victory.”

Foster saw the affects of winning some games this past year.

“We had a JV/varsity schedule, but we had some real success,” Foster said. “We went 5-3. People started really coming around. People were like, ‘Coach, I want to be on the team.’ ”

The atmosphere reminded him of what it was like coaching at Landry early in his career, when going to games at the school was a must-do activity.

“If you wanted to find love or some type of release, let’s go to a basketball game at Landry’s gym,” Foster said. “Let’s go support the school. I loved that about that area.”

And now he’s applying those lessons to Rabouin.

“That’s one of the things I learned, that it takes a community for a program to be successful just like Landry was,” Foster said.

Elementary, my dear

What it all boils down to, however, is time.

Time for the current crop of high school players to buy into what the coaches are selling.

Time for communities to build back to the level they were before Katrina.

Time for students in elementary schools – grades K through 8 in New Orleans – to reach high school.

“We’ve got to get younger kids involved,” Bordainick said. “That way, five years from now I’m not fighting the same battle. Now I’ve got 6th graders who can’t wait to get to Carver to play baseball, can’t wait to get to Carver to play football.”

Added Griffith, “We’ve got a whole lot of teaching ahead of us. We’ve got to get hold of the younger kids and just teach them and get them disciplined.”

Prior to the storm, each high school had a pipeline into it from feeder schools. That system was shattered when the levees broke.

Only 23 elementary schools currently have athletic programs up and running. They, in turn, feed seven high schools.

“It’s a day-to-day process on trying to redevelop programs in not only the high schools, but the elementary schools as well,” RSD athletics director Allen Woods said.

And while it starts with the young players, the teaching doesn’t end in middle school. Griffith knows this all too well.

“You’ve got to do a lot of preparation into being successful in athletics,” Griffith said. “Right now, we’re learning how to say the alphabet and count to 10. Later on, we’ll be able to put some words together.

“We’ll be able to see Spot run later.”

Playing year round

One other solution coaches like to talk about is getting athletes to play the entire year.

While this is easier said than done, it’s not impossible.

At Clark, Soulny already sees the result of his players working out during the summer. While his team, which went 9-14 and 7-7 in District 11-3A a season ago, still can’t keep up with the St. Augustine’s and O.P. Walker’s of the world, it’s catching up with other schools.

“Every day we’re closing the gap some,” Soulny said. “I’m in a summer league. I can hang with people at the smaller schools, but not the big schools. I do all right with the St. Paul’s and the Reserve Christian’s.”

Summer leagues aren’t new.

Basketball, baseball and soccer have long had them.

While football doesn’t have a league, per se, teams have worked out at least three days a week for years. Now, they’re becoming involved in 7-on-7 passing camps and leagues.

But for some of the teenagers at RSD schools, the commitment to play in the summer hasn’t necessarily been there.

“It’s about building interest and holding onto that interest,” Bordainick said. “You’ve got to come at them year round. You can’t do it once the season starts. It’s too late. …

“The thing that came out of this year is we have a core group of guys dedicated to their sports. Now we’ve got to build on it.”

Building won’t come quickly, though. It will take time.

New facilities

Ultimately, total equality might finally come when each RSD school has new facilities.

Photo by Chad Bower, WWL-TV.com

Pan-American Stadium will be used as the home to most RSD football programs. The facility, destroyed by Katrina, recently was finished being renovated.

That means new gyms and new buildings to go along with the new equipment recently purchased by the RSD.

“As other schools are built, we’ll come around,” Woods said. “Those processes are in motion now. It takes a little while to build $50 million schools, but at least we know they’re in motion. We know they’re coming.

“As these new schools come online, we’ll be better. Our kids will have a greater opportunity to excel.”

The RSD will announce its plans on building new facilities in the coming weeks.

And it’s knowing where the RSD is in the process, in the long run, that might keep the coaches around.

“Right now, we’re just looking at the tunnel, trying to make a decision if we’re going to go in,” Griffith said. “We’re at the mouth. We don’t know what lights or how long that tunnel is going to be before we find that light.”