Thursday Poem of the Week!: Episode One

Each Thursday, ASNE will be posting some of our favorite poet-athlete poems. We hope you love them as much as we do!

This Week: A Boy, by Christian M.

A Boy

A boy is as big as a falling crystal

He is like a sound that won’t go

He is a light as big as stars

Like the bike

He calls Vipe the Swipe

His home was Glitter Let Park

He was like a stable table

He is like the moon

That is like a raindrop

Getting darker and lighter

Christian M.

Play soccer and support 1,500 Boston inner-city youth at the HubCup!

America SCORES New England  is looking for university students to play in Boston’s first ever Hub Cup! The Hub Cup is ASNE’s newest fundraising event, a citywide soccer tournament with teams made up of Boston-area university students, to take place during April and May 2010.

ASNE’s staff will organize and run a 32-team tournament at Boston’s Clemente Field, with the winning teams and top fundraising teams from each ‘regional’ tournament advancing to the Hub Cup Final to compete for the title of Hub Cup Champion. Games will be 7v7, teams must have at least two women, and each team is guaranteed at least three games. The entry fee per team for the tournament is $500; America SCORES New England will set up online donation pages for each team to facilitate fundraising efforts.

ASNE is an after-school program that combines soccer, creative writing, and service learning to combat rising rates of childhood obesity and low literacy in Boston, and is the largest after-school program operating within the Boston Public Schools. The America SCORES New England staff will support each Hub Cup team throughout the entire fundraising process. All funds raised for the Hub Cup will be used to benefit America SCORES New England’s tri-curricular programming that reaches 1,500 Boston public school students each year.

For more information about how to enter your soccer team into the Hub Cup, or about how you can help out with the event, please contact ASNE’s Event and Administration Manager, Alex Maeder at amaeder@americascores.org or by phone at (617) 265-0066 ext 153.

Our Shining Girls at the Shining Women, Bright Futures speaker series

BOSTON, MA—This past Thursday, at the first meeting of SCORES’ Shining Women, Bright Futures speaker series, 14 6^th to 8^th grade SCORES girls at the Umana Barnes School met with two fantastic professional women. For the first meeting, Greta Teller, a sports marketing professional, and Jacqui Bowman, Deputy director of greater Boston Legal Services, volunteered their time to share their life experiences with the girls. Sitting around a large round table, the girls took turns asking Greta and Jaqui questions about topics such as where they went to college, and how they chose their careers. The enthusiasm of the girls for the opportunity was evident to everyone watching: Greta was happy to say that “it was definitely something [the girls] think is important, thinking about what to do. When we sat down, they took the floor and ran.”  SCORES’ Shining Women, Bright Futures speaker series, which brings successful professional women in the Boston community in to talk with SCORES students, will continue throughout the winter.

If you would like to volunteer as a speaker yourself for one of the meetings, you can email Anne Strong at astrong@americascores.org

Introducing...the SCORES mentorship program!

America SCORES New England is excited to announce the start of our pilot mentorship program! The program will kick off at the beginning of February and will take place at 5 of our schools matching SCORES youth with college students for 1:1 mentoring. The program will take place after-school on school grounds for 90 minutes once a week. Then once season gets underway, the week of March 22^nd, the mentors will continue the relationships that they have cultivated by supporting their mentees during practices and games. The mentorship program is designed to supplement SCORES core programming by offering an additional supportive role model in SCORES youth’s lives. With these mentor role models in place, our goal is for the mentees to eventually become even more invested leaders on their teams and in their communities.

Speaking of mentors and role models, check out the fabulous cookie decorating undertaken by our very own McKay kids with enthusiastic volunteers from Thomson Reuters. Yum!