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Rude awakening: Dreams of prep school were snatched away from two city kids who thought football was their ticket to a better life

The football coach at an elite prep school may have behaved badly in over-zealous recruitment efforts, but that doesn't make two boys' dream of football being the ticket out of the ghetto any more realistic. It us hard to see why Salisbury didn't make the academic requirements very clear from the start. One can guess that the coach had no notion of the level of the boy's skills. Few people working in a prep school environment would have.

The realistic message for all students in urban ghetto schools is that athletics very very rarely provides a ticket out. Dé-Jon Berment and Da'Vaughn Goss had a dream, but it wasn't based on reality.

By Bob Hohler

"What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" -- Langston Hughes, "Harlem"

Two boys striving for a better life -- free from the soundtrack of gunfire and police sirens in their gang-ridden neighborhoods -- believed in the dream maker since the day he arrived in Dorchester last year and offered them a way out.

The dream maker was Chris Adamson, the football coach at Salisbury School, an elite boarding academy nestled in the Connecticut Berkshires. The boys were Dé-Jon Berment and Da'Vaughn Goss, star alumni of the Dorchester Eagles, a nationally acclaimed Pop Warner team whose mission is saving kids from dangerous city streets.

According to the youths, their parents and coaches, Adamson told Berment and Goss last year they would receive scholarships to enter Salisbury School as sophomores this fall and play football for the defending Class A New England prep champions. Adamson began recruiting the pair after he saw them on ESPN playing for the Eagles in the 2005 Pop Warner Super Bowl.

The youths banked on Adamson's offer. Trailed by an HBO crew producing a documentary on the Eagles, they attended Salisbury's football camp last summer at Adamson's invitation, all expenses paid. They passed up playing football in school last fall -- Berment at Dorchester High School, Goss at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School -- to remain healthy for Salisbury. Berment also accepted a scholarship to attend summer school last month at Salisbury, still believing in the dream.

Then came the pain. Salisbury officials recently informed the youths that the school had no room for them. Only weeks before Berment and Goss expected to start a new life, they were back on streets they often fear to tread, their dream deferred.

In a case that exposes the potential pitfalls of big-time prep schools recruiting inner-city youths who lack experience and expertise in the process, heartache and anger ensued, with much of the rage directed at Salisbury officials.

"They came in here preying on these kids and selling them pipe dreams," Eagles coach Terry Cousin said. "Then they slapped them in the face. It's disgusting."

Adamson described the saga as "heartbreaking all around" and attributed the dream's unraveling to his overestimating the pair's academic records. He denied promising the youths scholarships but acknowledged leading them to believe they would receive them.

"If I didn't naively think they were admittable, based on word of mouth, I would not have mistakenly kept trying as long as I did to get them in," Adamson said. "I would have ended it early."

Adamson's explanation provided little solace to the Eagles. Salisbury was the first prep school in recent years to formally recruit players in the Dorchester program, and the prospect of Berment and Goss chasing their dreams was hailed by parents, coaches, and community leaders as inspiration for other at-risk youths.

HBO cameras recorded the scene last winter when Pop Warner officials announced at their annual banquet that Berment and Goss would play for Salisbury. The youths expected to spend the next three years on the leafy campus, with the school waiving the $40,000 annual tuition.

"It's devastating to our program because these kids honestly believed they were setting an example by showing the younger kids they could get the same kind of opportunities if they worked hard, too," said Leslie Goodwin, president of the Eagles. "Now everyone is looking at us and wondering what happened."

Because Adamson led the youths to believe Salisbury would admit them, Berment and Goss did not apply to other schools.

"That was my big dream, my future, right there," said Berment, who turned 16 in July. "That's what I was relying on."

At the football camp last summer, Adamson worked out the Boston youths with the varsity team and said he envisioned them playing in Salisbury's defensive backfield. Goss, 17, had starred as a running back, wide receiver, and defensive back in leading the Eagles to four straight Pop Warner Super Bowls from 2002 to 2005, while Berment played similar positions in the 2005 national championship game. (The Eagles lost all four Super Bowls.)

Goss was confident enough about a future at Salisbury that he bade farewell in June to his teachers and friends at Madison Park. He affixed a Salisbury logo to his bedroom wall and allowed himself to imagine living in an environment free of fear and violence. His Mattapan neighborhood has been designated by Boston police as a violent hot spot.

"I thought I was going to get out," Goss said at the federal courthouse in Boston, where he holds a summer job as a messenger in the US attorney's office. "I want to live in a place where I can walk around outside. I can't do that now because I can't go anywhere that guys haven't claimed as their territory. Basically, I'm trapped in my house. At Salisbury, there's none of that."

Peter Berment, an unemployed carpenter, saw Salisbury as a safe haven and prized educational opportunity for his son, far from the dangers and distractions of their Dorchester neighborhood.

"The kids are safe on the football field," Peter Berment said at Garvey Park in Dorchester, home of the Eagles. "But you worry about them getting caught in the crossfire when they go home and have to deal with all the kids who want to be thugs and don't have a problem shooting people and selling drugs."

With Adamson failing to deliver, Cousin suggested that he betrayed Salisbury's motto -- "Esse Quam Videri," Latin for "To be, rather than to seem" -- and should be accountable if trouble were to befall Berment or Goss.

"I would hate to hear, God forbid, that anything happens to these kids in the next year when we know where they should have been," the Eagles coach said.

Adamson said he wants nothing but the best for Berment and Goss, whom he described as "great kids and great athletes." He said he wanted so much for the youths to attend Salisbury that he believed everyone last year who told him they were good students.

Yet even when Adamson learned that the youths were unlikely to meet Salisbury's admissions standards, he failed to clearly convey the news, according to Berment, Goss, their parents and advocates. They all quoted Adamson as telling them the youths "definitely" would be admitted this fall.

Though Adamson said he told everyone he "definitely wanted" Berment and Goss admitted, he acknowledged keeping their dream alive.

"I led them on, and I didn't mean to lead them on," he said. "I expected a positive outcome until the very end."

Adamson, who also serves as Salisbury's director of college advising, said the school's admissions staff made every effort to justify admitting Berment and Goss.

In Berment's case, Salisbury took the unusual step of offering him a scholarship to attend summer school to demonstrate that he could handle the workload. By all accounts, Berment languished the first week, then thrived after he was told he needed to participate more in class. Yet despite finishing strong and winning a reading award, Berment was informed with a week remaining in the summer semester that he would not be admitted this fall.

"I was crushed when they told me," he said. "My heart dropped to my feet."

As for Goss, Salisbury made an exception by keeping him in consideration even though he did not complete his application until two months after the February deadline, Adamson said. Goss had filed an application the previous year with the help of a Pop Warner parent, but Salisbury required another application with a new set of teacher recommendations.

School officials made a last-ditch effort to help Goss meet the admissions standards by inviting him to take the Secondary School Aptitude Test. Goss received a rejection letter, however, after the school received his scores.

Adamson insisted that neither youth was passed over for another football player. He said the decisions related solely to whether the boys could meet the school's educational demands.

"If we admitted them, we would have set them up to fail academically," he said.

The decisions stung nevertheless.

"To get that news, after the coach had been telling me along I was going to get in, was devastating," Goss said. "I thought that was the best shot I was going to get."

In hindsight, Adamson said, he should have kept the youths and their supporters better informed.

"I feel incredibly bad about the whole thing," he said. "I didn't do as much hand-holding in the process as I needed to do. I was surprised by their academic records. I didn't see that coming to the extent that I should have."

Cousin dismissed Adamson's explanation, saying the Salisbury coach knew about the academic records for nearly a year.

"He really exploited these kids," Cousin said. "We need to let Salisbury know what they did to these kids at the 11th hour was wrong."

Goodwin, watching practice, cited the Langston Hughes poem, and vowed to prevent future recruiters from dashing the hopes of youths the Eagles try to nurture.

"We won't let our guard down anymore," she said. "The next time someone comes to look at our kids and give them a better opportunity, we'll know what the rules of engagement are."

As for Adamson, he said he contacted as many as 30 other private schools in an unsuccessful effort to find a place for Berment and Goss. At it stands, they expect to return to Dorchester High and Madison Park. But as the days dwindle until the new school year, the youths have yet to abandon their dream. They continue to search for a way out, a new life in which they can play football, focus on academics, and live without fear.

"If somebody out there has it in their heart to believe in them and give them a chance, I believe they will excel, not just in football but in education and being men," Goodwin said. "All they want is a chance."

— Bob Hohler
Boston Globe
2007-08-19
http://www.boston.com/sports/schools/football/articles/2007/08/19/rude_awakening/

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