Kevin Richberg and his colleagues are on a mission.
With the help of fellow coaches and teachers, the Montclair High School teacher and assistant football coach is tackling teenage culture head on, and he’s trying to make it cool for young athletes to be good students.
Richberg is doing it with something called the "MHS ESPM Zone." ESPM is short for the Educational Support and Personal Motivation program, and it was launched earlier this school year at the 1,900-student high school.
"There are three components to the program," Richberg told The Times as he and Montclair High School football head coach and Assistant Principal Ed Lebida watched their players go through practice on a windswept Woodman Field earlier this week.
"We’re providing after-school tutoring five days a week in four subject areas, including math, English, social studies and science," Richberg said. "We’re conducting SAT prep sessions for our seniors this fall and for our juniors next spring.
"And we have Duane West, a well-known motivational speaker, coming in to talk with our players," Richberg noted.
It’s an intense commitment, but one that the MHS staff feels is well worth the effort.
"Unfortunately, too many of our young kids don’t want to be associated with being smart. They want to be associated with not doing the right thing," Lebida said.
Unfortunate, because as Lebida and Richberg explained, the negative peer pressure has influenced too many high school athletes to focus all their energy and talents only on their sport, to the detriment of their grades.
As a result, coaches and teachers are seeing too many promising young students let their grade point averages or their Scholastic Aptitude Test scores slip limited their future prospects.
Turning things around will require what Lebida described as "changing the culture of our society that talks about athletes just having to be good athletes and not being good students."
The campaign began a few weeks ago when West launched the first of his regular after-school coaching sessions with a select group of players.
Montclair School District officials were able to secure $65,000 in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to cover the cost of West’s work with the high school players and with younger students at Glenfield and Mt. Hebron Middle Schools.
Because federal guidelines require the funding be used for new projects, they couldn’t be earmarked for either tutoring or SAT prep sessions. Due to these federal regulations, the district spent $50,000 for West’s weekly instructional sessions at MHS and $15,000 for his presentations at Glenfield and Mt. Hebron.
West, a former high school star athlete, has made numerous TV appearances. He known for delivering a strong message to youngsters.
"Soon as he walks into the room, he asks everyone immediately to sit straight and to pay attention to the person talking to them," said Montclair High School Principal James Earle, a former student athlete who spent time in the NFL.
"West works on those basic character skills for our young people that will translate much further.
"He’s like a father training his son to be the very best man he could possibly be. That’s where West and this program are coming from," Earle said.
"We’re trying to train outstanding young men, not just to be great athletes, we want them to be outstanding student," the MHS principal said. "But in the end, we want them to serve their community, to be respectful, to earn respect and give respect to the community."
The teens in the program said they are already learning some important lessons. The same qualities that make teens great athletes can also help them become top students.
"I learned a lot about how important it is to focus and plan," said sophomore Julian Pinnix. "When you’re take on whole bunch of responsibilities, you have to focus and not fool around."
Aamad Bush, a junior, said he appreciates the tutoring at ESPM Zone.
"I like it a lot," Bush said. "It actually helped me pull up my GPA. I brought my math grade up a lot from last year. I get a lot of extra time after school with teachers."
GPAs were also on senior Kyle Gayle’s mind.
"The first thing college recruiters ask when they come is ‘what’s the player’s GPA?’" Gayle said. "If it’s not up there, you can lose scholarship offers or get no offers at all."
Senior Drew Jenkins said he made the most of SAT prep sessions.
"The SAT tutoring is definitely a help," Jenkins said. "I went up in my math score."
Jenkins said he also enjoyed the opportunity the program gives him and other MHS players to meet with and tutor younger middle school students.
"We tell the younger kids to keep their grades up in middle school because it’s much easier to keep them up when you get to high school and want to play," Jenkins said.
