Post by blackcrowheart on Jun 13, 2007 14:39:04 GMT -5
Native American athletes still struggle to get noticed
Greg Boeck
USA Today
TUBA CITY - Ryne Hemstreet's gold medal is displayed in the trophy case in his family's living room in this northern Arizona Navajo town.
The aspiring 17-year-old baseball player, named after former Chicago Cubs great Ryne Sandberg, won it in Denver as a shortstop and pitcher for Arizona's 16-and-under Native American team in last July's North American Indigenous Games, an Olympic-style competition that attracted 7,200 athletes from the United States and Canada.
Hemstreet wants more. That's why, after his upcoming junior season at Greyhills Academy, a local tribal grant school where he carries a 3.7 grade-point average and ranks seventh in his class of 124, he will move to Phoenix. He'll live there with his older brother and play his senior year at a higher-profile high school in hopes of attracting college scholarship offers. advertisement
Hemstreet is aware of the long odds he and other Native American athletes face. Native Americans in the 562 federally recognized tribes - 341 in the lower 48 states - make up 1.5 percent (4.1 million) of the U.S. population but comprised 0.3 percent (602) of male and female athletes at the college level in 2004-05, according to the most current NCAA race and ethnicity report.
"As a Native American, nobody takes you too seriously that you can play at that level," Hemstreet said. "It's my job to go out and get noticed."
A high school dropout rate of 40.7 percent dead-ends the careers of most Native Americans. Those who do move on to college athletics struggle with the culturally challenging transition beyond the reservation, often leaving school to return home. Native American athletes face those hurdles in addition to the highly competitive world of sports participation after high school. Native American sports leaders are trying to address this but are doing so with largely disjointed efforts and sporadic financial support. Their goals - more college athletes and inclusion in the Olympics as a sovereign nation - are lofty but face an uphill climb, even with the 1990s explosion of a $22 billion Native American gaming industry operated by 223 tribes in 28 states.
A handful of tribes have used gaming dollars to plunge into sports ownership. However, even the Mohegans, who own the WNBA Connecticut Sun, and the Southern California Sycuan tribe and South Florida Seminoles, both of whom promote professional boxing, have directed limited money into sponsoring professional Native American athletes.
Golfer Notah Begay III, a Stanford graduate and the first Native American to win on the PGA Tour, said these efforts are not enough.
Begay is the biggest role model among aspiring Native American athletes, whose struggle to find their place among the elite drips with irony. This is a culture that set up shop in sports long before the first baseball or basketball games were played in the 19th century.
In the 20th century, Jim Thorpe, a Potawatomi, won two Olympic gold medals, played professional baseball and football and became the first president of the league that would become the NFL. Billy Mills, a Sioux who came off the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, scored one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history when he won the 10,000 meters in 1964.
Navajo distance runner Brandon Leslie is among several Native American 2008 Olympic hopefuls, but his battle for financial backing is typical of top-notch Indian athletes.
Maurice Smith, an advocate with the Native American Sports Council, which is a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said, "I can't raise a dollar for this kid because nobody believes in his passion and understands here's the next Billy Mills."
Leslie left a reservation in Gallup, N.M., and became an NCAA Division II All-American and the 2000 Division II 10,000-meters champion at Adams State College in Alamosa, Colo. His best time in the event is 28 minutes, 36.52 seconds, and he competed in the 2004 U.S. Olympic trials.
Smith said Native American athletes don't lack drive or talent. "The perspiration is there," he said. "The commitment is there. We need to continue to be resilient and provide more opportunities."
Healthy sports participation vibrates on most reservations but not beyond. That could change if the Native American Olympic Steering Committee's bid for Olympic inclusion succeeds.
Bid organizers want International Olympic Committee recognition as a sovereign nation, which would allow Native Americans and First Nations athletes in Canada to compete in the Games as their own North American Indigenous team.
Begay returned to his tribal community outside Albuquerque and started a foundation in 2005 to heighten diabetes awareness. He also started a soccer program.
"It's my job," Begay said, "to make sure those who come after me can stand on my shoulders and see farther and reach higher. We need to see more kids in Division I and more graduating."
Greg Boeck
USA Today
TUBA CITY - Ryne Hemstreet's gold medal is displayed in the trophy case in his family's living room in this northern Arizona Navajo town.
The aspiring 17-year-old baseball player, named after former Chicago Cubs great Ryne Sandberg, won it in Denver as a shortstop and pitcher for Arizona's 16-and-under Native American team in last July's North American Indigenous Games, an Olympic-style competition that attracted 7,200 athletes from the United States and Canada.
Hemstreet wants more. That's why, after his upcoming junior season at Greyhills Academy, a local tribal grant school where he carries a 3.7 grade-point average and ranks seventh in his class of 124, he will move to Phoenix. He'll live there with his older brother and play his senior year at a higher-profile high school in hopes of attracting college scholarship offers. advertisement
Hemstreet is aware of the long odds he and other Native American athletes face. Native Americans in the 562 federally recognized tribes - 341 in the lower 48 states - make up 1.5 percent (4.1 million) of the U.S. population but comprised 0.3 percent (602) of male and female athletes at the college level in 2004-05, according to the most current NCAA race and ethnicity report.
"As a Native American, nobody takes you too seriously that you can play at that level," Hemstreet said. "It's my job to go out and get noticed."
A high school dropout rate of 40.7 percent dead-ends the careers of most Native Americans. Those who do move on to college athletics struggle with the culturally challenging transition beyond the reservation, often leaving school to return home. Native American athletes face those hurdles in addition to the highly competitive world of sports participation after high school. Native American sports leaders are trying to address this but are doing so with largely disjointed efforts and sporadic financial support. Their goals - more college athletes and inclusion in the Olympics as a sovereign nation - are lofty but face an uphill climb, even with the 1990s explosion of a $22 billion Native American gaming industry operated by 223 tribes in 28 states.
A handful of tribes have used gaming dollars to plunge into sports ownership. However, even the Mohegans, who own the WNBA Connecticut Sun, and the Southern California Sycuan tribe and South Florida Seminoles, both of whom promote professional boxing, have directed limited money into sponsoring professional Native American athletes.
Golfer Notah Begay III, a Stanford graduate and the first Native American to win on the PGA Tour, said these efforts are not enough.
Begay is the biggest role model among aspiring Native American athletes, whose struggle to find their place among the elite drips with irony. This is a culture that set up shop in sports long before the first baseball or basketball games were played in the 19th century.
In the 20th century, Jim Thorpe, a Potawatomi, won two Olympic gold medals, played professional baseball and football and became the first president of the league that would become the NFL. Billy Mills, a Sioux who came off the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, scored one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history when he won the 10,000 meters in 1964.
Navajo distance runner Brandon Leslie is among several Native American 2008 Olympic hopefuls, but his battle for financial backing is typical of top-notch Indian athletes.
Maurice Smith, an advocate with the Native American Sports Council, which is a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said, "I can't raise a dollar for this kid because nobody believes in his passion and understands here's the next Billy Mills."
Leslie left a reservation in Gallup, N.M., and became an NCAA Division II All-American and the 2000 Division II 10,000-meters champion at Adams State College in Alamosa, Colo. His best time in the event is 28 minutes, 36.52 seconds, and he competed in the 2004 U.S. Olympic trials.
Smith said Native American athletes don't lack drive or talent. "The perspiration is there," he said. "The commitment is there. We need to continue to be resilient and provide more opportunities."
Healthy sports participation vibrates on most reservations but not beyond. That could change if the Native American Olympic Steering Committee's bid for Olympic inclusion succeeds.
Bid organizers want International Olympic Committee recognition as a sovereign nation, which would allow Native Americans and First Nations athletes in Canada to compete in the Games as their own North American Indigenous team.
Begay returned to his tribal community outside Albuquerque and started a foundation in 2005 to heighten diabetes awareness. He also started a soccer program.
"It's my job," Begay said, "to make sure those who come after me can stand on my shoulders and see farther and reach higher. We need to see more kids in Division I and more graduating."