Group helps kids beat the odds

Famous sports figures help to inspire the youths to do better.

ALTOONA, Pa. (AP) — A stereotype followed Linda Adams and her 13-year-old son, Charles Wilson, from Philadelphia to Tyrone.

Adams said her son’s schoolmates assumed that because he was from the city, he must be associated with a gang. When she noticed him wearing colored bandannas, Adams decided she was not letting her child, a seventh-grader at Tyrone Area Middle School, choose a life of violence.

“It was easy for him to go either wrong or right,” she said. “It was either military school or find help in the area.”

The help she found was from Rocco Scalzi, founder and chief executive officer of Beating the Odds Foundation, a mentoring and motivational charity group based in Hollidaysburg.

“He [Scalzi] took it on to become a mentor to my son,” she said. “You could see a big change since Rocco came into our lives. Instead of pushing drugs and gangs, they’re pushing Rocco’s Beating the Odds.”

Scalzi has been mentoring Charles and two of his schoolmates, Shaquille Williams and Nick Romano, both 13, for more than a year.

The boys joined the foundation’s Quarterback Club, a program started through the foundation by Leigh Steinberg, sports attorney and the inspiration for the title character in the movie “Jerry Maguire.”

The club includes “Quarterbacks of Life” Rocky Bleier, four-time Super Bowl champion with the Pittsburgh Steelers and co-chairman of the foundation; Ben Roethlisberger; Steve Young; and Warren Moon, who share their motivational stories with kids.

“I’m making better decisions because Rocco told us about being a mentor,” Shaquille said.

The boys also are members of the school’s football team.

“[The program] helps us be leaders, helps us stay out of trouble,” Nick said.

Scalzi said he tried to make a connection with the boys, “who were headed in the wrong direction,” he said, adding that famous sports friends helped make an impression.

“All of a sudden, I’m cool,” he laughed.

Reaching the boys takes more than a cool factor, though.

Scalzi shares his story of how he beat the odds with kids. The former Altoona police officer’s biggest challenge in life was learning to live with the fact that he had shot a young man and left him paralyzed for life when he was a rookie.

Scalzi said he doesn’t like to talk about the incident, and that it took seven years to get his life “back on track.”

He found the boarding station to that track through a support group for burnt-out police officers in Boston.

“By teaming up with others, I felt like I wasn’t alone,” he said.

During his recovery, Scalzi began speaking at schools and eventually created Beating the Odds in 1990. The foundation focuses on prevention and early intervention through motivational speaking programs and inspirational demonstrations at schools.

The organization also matches younger children with mentors.

“We want to start working with kids that are young enough that we can reduce the negatives,” Scalzi said, adding that the foundation addresses issues such as alcohol and drug use.

Statistics in a video presentation during a Beating the Odds assembly Thursday at Pleasant Valley Elementary School tell the story: 60 percent of kids admitted that drugs were sold or kept in their schools; 2,800 teenage girls become pregnant every year; and 80 percent of adult smokers started as teens.

Celebrity members of the club such as Bleier; Adam Taliaferro, a former Penn State football player who recovered from a paralyzing neck injury suffered in 2000; and Southwest Airline pilot Kim Cooper attended the school event, where Steinberg presented Scalzi with a check for $1 million, pledging the money to the foundation during the next five years.

A fund donation was not the only reason for the visit, however.

“The reason we’re up here is because we believe you’re worth our time. You’re our future,” Steinberg told the students, adding that the people involved in the program prove that “you can have dreams and they can come true.”

But dreams don’t come easily.

Steinberg told the kids they need to learn discipline and how to work hard and discover their values and dreams.

Our goal is to keep every young person on the right track to fulfill their dreams,” he said. “We believe in you, and you need to believe in yourself.”

Beating the Odds works with children during the school year through teachers such as Brian Eberhart, who teaches fifth grade at Pleasant Valley.

He said he likes to inspire his students to “go out there and beat the odds.”

“If you have dreams and goals, you can beat the obstacles,” he said. “We become winners in life.”

Margo Berry, 10, who attended the assembly with her fifth-grade class, dreams of becoming a professional softball player, she said. She knows that hard work and determination are needed to realize that dream.

“I’m going to try to play in college and just keep going,” Margo said. “[The club] taught me to never let anything take you down and to just keep going for what you want.”