Small Urban winner:
Science Leadership Academy
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Miranda Sosa can say it now that her high school basketball career at Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in Philadelphia recently ended after graduating. “Freshman year, I was like, morning practice? What’s with getting me up super early in the morning?” she says.
Practices at 6:30 a.m. meant Sosa woke up by 5:30. Depending on if she stayed with her mom in Philadelphia or dad in New Jersey, she had a 20- to 40-minute commute on public transportation to whatever practice location that SLA, minus its own gym, could find before class. Fortunately, the costs for public transportation are covered by the School District of Philadelphia. Otherwise, the $5.20 roundtrip costs for a train and bus might have prevented Sosa from playing.
As the years went on, morning practices grew on Sosa. She found they freed up her afternoons to work on school projects with classmates or earn money with jobs at a restaurant, grocery store and ice-skating rink.
She also felt energized. “I honestly think it’s more beneficial to have morning practices because, for me, working out in the morning prepares me more for the day,” Sosa says.
In fact, there’s science to support morning exercise makes students’ brains better ready to learn. One study found that starting with early-morning physical education class helped a high school dramatically increase its standardized reading and math test scores. Other research, however, revealed that high school students’ sleep cycles benefited by starting classes later in order to sleep better and feel less sleepy during the day.
To be clear, SLA’s basketball, softball and Ultimate frisbee teams hold practices in the mornings out of necessity. Good luck finding available fields and gyms in Philadelphia after school. Every SLA game is an away game on a school bus. So, some coaches elect to carve out practices in the morning, creating some challenges but also aligning with the public magnet school’s mission to grow access to extracurricular activities.
Only one-third of urban high school students nationally participate in school sports. Though it’s not an exact comparison to that national figure, 40% of SLA students play sports or participate in clubs with physical activity. For its ability to adapt practice times and intentionally expose urban students to new sports, SLA is recognized as the Aspen Institute’s Project Play winner in the Small Urban Schools category of our Reimagining School Sports initiative.
SLA differs from many urban schools in that it’s a project-based school with a college-preparatory curriculum that focuses on science, technology, mathematics, and entrepreneurship. But SLA faces many of the same challenges, such as diminished budgets and lack of playing spaces, to provide quality sports access to students. Creative thinking guides SLA, which has thought outside the box since it opened in 2006 and faced resistance to play sports at all.
“We were told by the school district, ‘Oh, you’ll be a science high school and those kids won’t want to play sports,’” says Chris Lehmann, SLA’s founding principal and CEO. “A since-retired administrator said, ‘Oh, come on, these kids don’t play sports.’ For lack of a better phrase, the sentiment was, ‘Nerds don’t play sports.’ I was horribly offended by that.”
Lehmann pushed forward, first with a basketball team and then Ultimate frisbee even though SLA was built without a gym or fields. (The school will have a shared gym in 2021-22 for the first time while sharing a renovated building with Benjamin Franklin High School. The building was closed in 2019 after its initial opening due to asbestos problems that caught the school district off guard following a $37 million renovation. Today, SLA has 16 sports teams and six clubs involving physical activity at this 500-student school of so-called “nerds.”
Samiyah Snowden, a junior at SLA, was always interested in playing sports but never joined an organized team because of the time commitment in relation to academics. Snowden, who is mixed race, also felt she did not see herself represented in certain sports while growing up.
“I feel there’s a lot of stereotypes when it comes to sports and race, like Black or White people only play this sport,” she says. “Just saying a sport is diverse is one thing, but actually making an effort is a completely other thing.”
While stuck at home during COVID-19 school shutdowns before her sophomore year, Snowden began to see herself trying soccer and joined SLA’s team. Nationally, far more White youth play soccer at a higher rate than Black kids, but SLA’s team is very diverse with Black, White and Asian students. Snowden worried her skills were not good enough because some SLA players have participated in soccer since they were young. She practiced all summer and watched YouTube videos.
“Then I realized some people actually didn’t play since they were little and my skill range was just a little above or lower,” says Snowden, who became a starter her first season. “A lot of my fears eventually went away. As soon as I joined the team, my coach and teammates were really, really welcoming. That was the biggest game changer.”
SLA embraces different sports and activities not regularly available in urban communities. A rock-climbing club with about 20 students was started by a student during COVID as a socially distanced activity. Girls lacrosse, which historically is played predominantly by White youth from wealthy homes, began in 2018 as a cooperative program with another magnet school. About half of the 28 students on the team are Asian, Black or Latina.
Roughly 25 SLA students participate annually in Students Run Philly Style, a city-wide program to inspire youth to run a full or half marathon. Most of these SLA students are typically not on sports teams.
According to Students Run Philly Style, 80% of its student participants throughout the city increase or maintain self-confidence, 50% decrease their violent behavior, and 41% increase their grade-point average.
Before COVID, SLA’s Ultimate program had 50 students on girls varsity, boys varsity and coed JV teams, meaning 10% of this diverse school played Ultimate, a predominantly White sport. About 75% of SLA’s Ultimate players only participate in this sport, Lehmann says. Last year’s captain became so much more physically fit from years of Ultimate that he made the basketball team as a senior.
Lehmann says he believes SLA fields the only majority Black and Latino Ultimate team on the East Coast and one of the few in the country. “I’ve had long conversations with some of our Black players who have to fight the stigma in their own community from people who say Ultimate is a White sport and it isn’t a real sport,” he says. “We have diverse captains to send a message to suburban teams we play, who don’t have that kind of representation, that Black and Latino students can be leaders in this sport. That’s really important to me and SLA.”
The culture of Ultimate appeals to some SLA students. Players call their own fouls, so integrity, sportsmanship and fair play are crucial components of the sport. At the end of every game, teams meet in a spirit circle to congratulate each other and award silly prizes. Lehmann is helping launch a middle school Ultimate league in Philadelphia to help grow the city’s four high school teams.
Like the basketball and softball teams at SLA, Ultimate practices in the mornings. It’s a necessity at SLA, where the lack of facility space is so bad that the girls soccer team uses railroad tracks in public parks as goals.
“I had a freshman goalie this year come up to me after a few practices and say, ‘When we have real games, will we have real goals?’” says Zoe Siswick, SLA’s girls soccer coach and athletic director. They do have real goals in games, but that doesn’t make the lack of goals at practices any less sad.
Morning practices are “our secret weapon,” Lehmann says. “You’re literally out there with the fog coming off the field, and it’s you and the kids. The day isn’t good or bad yet. They haven’t had a (bad) class. They haven’t gotten in a fight with their friend. It’s this sacred time that this is what we do. The hard part is there are kids you don’t get to play because they don’t want to get up so early to practice. They’re not entirely wrong. It’s hard getting up.”
The Ultimate team practices on empty park fields four mornings per week, usually from 6:30-8 am. The fields are close enough to SLA that students can hop on a city bus after practice and get to school on time for the start of classes.
Siswick runs morning practices for softball but sticks with the afternoon for soccer, always checking with players for their thoughts on what time they prefer. She notices morning practices weed out students who are not truly interested or committed.
“I’ve had players on my team who are persistently late to school and once morning softball starts, they’re never late for the entire season,” Siswick says. “Now, I probably wouldn’t be surprised if some students are falling asleep in class. But it avoids feeling like you’re not getting home until 6 pm or later every day, which can be tough for coaches with a family and students.”
For years, the girls basketball team practiced in a tiny elementary school gym before they were able to rent a local fitness facility for morning practices.
“There are a ton of kids who have jobs in the afternoons – and working way more hours during COVID – who wouldn’t be able to play if we had afternoon practice,” says Erin Giorgio, the girls basketball coach in recent years. “We make it more accessible for a larger number of kids by practicing in the morning. The morning creates complications because they travel by themselves, but a lot of parents would rather have them travel in the morning than night.”
Matthew Kay, SLA’s boys basketball coach, says he lost count on the number of rec centers he has rented across Philadelphia for practices and games. “It’s kind of like, what haven’t I used?” he says.
Strategies that Science Leadership Academy (SLA) uses that stood out as exemplary to the Aspen Institute and our project advisory board:
Be creative to secure sports access
Sometimes SLA thinks it can’t afford a potential practice facility. That’s not the end of the conversation. SLA secured a basketball court at a private facility by agreeing to help create a promotional video. The softball team has discussed holding joint practices with a nearby school at its field. A couple SLA students play football thanks to a cooperative agreement with Benjamin Franklin High School.
Hire women coaches and be flexible
At SLA, 75% of the coaches are women, including female head coaches for girls soccer, girls volleyball, girls basketball, girls lacrosse, softball, coed cross country, coed swimming, and coed track and field. Supportive partners who take on household responsibilities help allow this. So do supportive administrators. When two female coaches return in 2022-23 from having babies, they will decide what practice time works best for their family and the students.
Use sports settings to hold real conversations on race
Matthew Kay, who teaches English and coaches boys basketball at SLA, wrote a book about how to lead meaningful race conversations in the classrooms. He says that talking about racial stereotypes and identity works better in sports – a setting where students want to be – than classrooms. “A lot of times we talk about conversations as if it’s all dependent on people’s personality,” Kay says. “Teachers aren’t often encouraged to work their techniques in leading conversations. Coaches are good at breaking things down to distinct skills that kids can practice that are replicable. Conversations are the same way.”
Kay used to schedule 6:30 am practices and preferred the early time. He’s switching to afternoons in 2021- 22 because he has a child to drop off at school each morning but hopes to return to mornings in the future.
“It’s sweet to be done at 3 pm,” Kay says. “Morning practices might work better at neighborhood schools than ours. One of our biggest challenges is Philly is a big city and kids are coming from all over. I can see why a lot of folks don’t do it like us.”
Many SLA students use buses, trains and subways from the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) to and from school. The commute can be as long as one hour each way. The School District of Philadelphia provides free SEPTA passes for students who live at least 1.5 miles from school.
Late-pass stickers let athletes ride SEPTA after 6 p.m. when they have games. Siswick, the athletic director, says the free passes allow her to schedule practices at fields that are a subway or bus ride away. “I can really have practice wherever because I know kids will be able to get there with passes,” she says.
If the school district did not provide passes, “I probably wouldn’t be able to play because it’s expensive to take SEPTA every day,” says Snowden, the soccer player at SLA. “I wouldn’t have made it to every practice.”
Lehmann says morning practices can be adopted by other urban schools and former players now tell him how much they miss 6:30 a.m. practices. But he cautions the first year will be “really, really hard.”
“You just have to get the ball rolling,” he says. “Then it gets easier. It becomes culture. I’d never be able to get six hours of practice a week if I tried to find fields after school. If you can get buy-in from the kids, morning practice opens up your schedule in so many ways.”