Hockey program
has great goals

Kids Stuff
By William Feldman

Welcome to Kids Stuff. Today’s column includes a look at a special organization just for kids: The Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation. I also have a cryptogram with an important message.
It was said, in 2005, Mr. Ed Snider made a dream of his a reality by creating the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation to give under-served children an opportunity to play the "greatest game ever invented."
Mr. Snider, out of respect for the sport and the athletes who play it, established the foundation to allow hockey to touch the lives of children in the Philadelphia area that might not otherwise have that opportunity.
There are about 1,500 to 2,000 children enrolled in their program, but their numbers are growing daily. They are currently at eight locations throughout the city. I was informed they have taken control at nearly all of the city-owned recreational rinks and they also operate at the Flyers Skate Zone in the Northeast as well as in Pennsauken, N.J.
The foundation has 12 members on its board of directors, including Ed Snider, chairman and CEO; his wife Christine Snider; Mary Ann Saleski, senior vice president of Comcast Spectacor Foundation; and several Comcast Spectacor officials: Fred Shabel, vice chairman; Sandy Lipstein, executive vice president and chief financial officer; Ike Richman, vice president; Phil Weinberg, executive vice president and general counsel; Peter Luukko, president and chief operating officer; and Pat Ferrill, vice president of rink development and management.
Other board members are Marjorie Wuestner, executive director of health, physical education and sports administration for the School District of Philadelphia; Jim Sutow, president of Chapel Steel (retired); and last but not least, Scott Tharp, president of the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation.
I was lucky to catch up with Scott Tharp, who explained more about the foundation. Scott attended William and Mary College on a tennis scholarship and graduated with a degree in communications. He was originally from the Eastern Shores of Maryland but spent most of his time in Wilmington, Del.
Scott was named president of the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation (ESYHF) in May 2007. I read he formerly served as executive director of Arthur Ashe Youth Tennis and Education (AAYTE), which for many years has been a national model for youth enrichment services. This organization is known for providing quality tennis and educational programming to more than 11,000 children, many coming from underserved at-risk inner-city communities.
During Arthur Ashe’s tenure at AAYTE, the organization experienced unprecedented growth culminating in the construction of its new $12.5 million state-of-the-art facility, housing indoor and outdoor tennis courts, as well as classrooms, a computer laboratory and reading library.
The mission of the ESYHF, according to Scott, is to "create and promote opportunities through sport and supplemental educational activity particularly to those who never would have such an opportunity. We use the sport of hockey as a hook to gain the attention of those kids so that we can immerse them in programming that will add much greater meaning to their lives."
The work Scott did with the foundation has a great impact on his work and involvement with Ed Snider’s Youth Hockey Program.
"I think the good work we were doing with Arthur Ashe’s foundation was noted by Mr. Snider and several of the board members. The non-profit sector in Philadelphia is rather small. I think as a result of their awareness of what we were doing, it brought my name to their attention," he said.
Scott told me that he is 100 percent involved in the activities of the program as he is not a volunteer, but rather a paid employee. This means he attends all of the events of the organization given his role and told me that Mr. Snider attends a remarkable number of the events given his very busy schedule on both coasts. Mr. Snider has offices on both coasts.
Also, Mr. Snider is very active on the board of directors in an advisory capacity, according to Scott, who emphasized, "I cannot stress enough what this foundation and organization mean to Mr. Snider. The time and energy that he has put into it is unbelievable considering all of his other priorities."
They have a small staff, so volunteers are a real necessity to them. They can have at any time four to eight interns that work for college credits and are not paid.
"We have a whole plethora of other volunteer coaches and instructors in our classrooms. Probably, at any given time, a dozen to eighteen volunteers are working for us," said Scott.
By the way, in case you are interested, volunteers include high school students, college students and hockey players, and even members of the senior sector.
The cost to run the program daily is hard to know because it fluctuates from season to season.
The overall operating cost at this time of year is about $870,000, which computes to about $500 per child, Scott said.
How does the program impact the kids?
"It is hard to measure, because we are such a young organization," Scott said, "but from past experience I can tell you that sometimes the presence of a caring adult in the lives of these children is really the difference maker in whether they matriculate in school or end up in jail. One of the things we do accomplish in our program is that we help the children make better, more informed choices."
Some of the programs meet as frequently as six times a week, but the average child in the program attends two to three times a week. Enrollment is currently open and they are doing their best to accommodate everyone by adding staff with volunteers and interns.
Eventually, they may have some limitations of ice time available. However, Scott feels they still have a lot of growth ahead of them. Applications are available at each of their sites and practically every recreation center in the city, and they provide the applications to many schools.
Scott explained the involvement from the children’s families:
"Parental involvement really varies," he said. "‘Our target populace are inner-city, under-served children who otherwise would not have this opportunity. Unfortunately, many of these children come from single-parent homes or live with caregivers that are related such as grandparents or uncles and aunts. As a result, there is not a lot of support, because the single-parent caregiver is so involved with work to make ends meet. In other cases, we have a significant amount of parental support. Our volunteer base is made up of a lot of parents of children in the program."
Rules need to be followed to participate in the program. They have a rather simple code of conduct: Participants need to show respect for the coaches, teachers and the adult volunteers.
"Just as important, they need to show respect for their peers and their fellow participants," Scott explained. "We ask that they stay in school, do their homework. For our child to participate in our afternoon programs, they must have attended school that day.
"Finally," he added, "we are asking them to make a commitment to ESYHF and a commitment to their school."
If a kid gets in trouble, "We just try to hug them a little tighter," Scott said.
"We try to give them extra attention. Often, their behavior is a cry for attention. However, honestly we can’t get in over our heads. There are some issues that these children have that we are just not equipped to handle. In those cases the best thing we can do is to be a conduit and guide them to help them get the professional help that they and their families might need. It is a fine line. We do our best in this regard."
One of the foundation’s priorities is to start construction on what they refer to as a hub facility. It will be a facility that will have two or more ice surfaces as well as a classroom, a computer lab and a library.
"The other thing we want to see is a database of children who have come through our program and who will have demonstrated a marked ability to stay in school, matriculate, that we have produced kids that have graduated from high school and have gone on to college or other venues," Scott said, "and more importantly, produced children that have learned how to make good decisions, the importance of staying out of trouble from the law and learned how to give back to their community."
For more information, you can visit http://www.esyhf.org
CRYPTOGRAM
KABVJ KABVJ KABVJ CIDFK I KABVFSA ZFIRAZJ XFIRAZJ ISV XWKF
HINTS: K is S; J is Y; X is W; D is K

Answer to last week’s cryptogram:
TO UNDERSTAND THE POWER OF SCIENCE IS KEY TO LIFE
Columnist William Feldman can be contacted by e-mail at wmkidscolumn@aol.com