UCLA Hoop Star Plays New Role in Summer : Althea Ford Focuses on Teaching at Sports Camp for Underprivileged

At first, UCLA basketball player Althea Ford wasn’t sure how she should react to a situation she ran into last summer

during her first stint as a counselor in the National Youth Sports Program.

A 10-year-old in the federally funded day camp at UCLA had made an unusual request. The boy, much shorter than the 6-foot Ford, had told her: “You’re nice. What’s your phone number?”

“He tried to pick up on me,” said Ford, “and I told him that wasn’t appropriate behavior.”

The youngster apparently took his rejection in stride. “After that I took him under my wing, and he became one of my best students,” she said. “He was one of the ones who would help me keep the other kids in line.”

The case of the little Lothario was one of the few times that Ford had to deal with campers who tried to disrupt the routine of the sports program, one of many conducted for underprivileged youth since 1968 by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. at college campuses throughout the nation. On the Westside, the camps will begin Friday and run into early August at UCLA and West Los Angeles College.

Ford said she encountered a few gang members who were unreceptive to routine at the camp. She said that as soon as a problem arose, she ordered the youths to run several laps around the gym, and the disruptive behavior ended.

She said she didn’t have to yell at the boys to make them run. “I got close to them and talked them into it.”

Thousands of boys and girls ages 10 to 16 who have attended the UCLA camps have welcomed the chance to get close to the counselors, many of them star UCLA athletes.

Bruins who have been counselors in recent years included track star Gail Devers, gymnast Carlos Spivey and football players Mike Sherrard, Dave Richards, James Washington and Derek Tennell.

The campers not only get to rub elbows with heroes they may have seen on television but they are also exposed to a university or college environment, far different places from the mean streets where many of them often hang out.

“If we get the kids off the streets and get them to campus, they might want to go to college someday,” said Charles Parish, the assistant UCLA athletic director who is in charge of the university’s program, which is entering its third decade.

At West Los Angeles College, which is beginning its second year in the program, Athletic Director Jim Raack said WLAC is one of the few community colleges holding one of the camps.

“We expose them to the advantages and opportunities of an advanced education, of a college-type environment,” he said. “One of the reasons we’re doing this is to educate them that there are other things out there besides gangs, to show them there is a future besides growing up in the streets.”

Activities offered at UCLA include co-ed basketball, soccer, swimming, tennis, volleyball and track, football for boys and dance for girls.

At WLAC, activities include football, softball, track, tennis, volleyball, swimming, aerobics and dance.

Other aspects of the program include lectures on the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse, career counseling and guidance on nutrition and health.

Free lunches are offered under the program, sponsored by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. Each camper also receives a free physical examination, administered at UCLA by the school’s medical center and at WLAC by volunteer physicians.

Between 300 and 400 youths attend the UCLA camp each year, and WLAC has room for 250. Parish said UCLA usually winds up with about 320 campers, that “some sign up and then go to summer school, others go on vacation and others just drop out.”

Raack said campers who do not wish to stand in line for a physical may obtain an examination from their own physicians before coming to camp. No one is turned away because of inability to pay a doctor, he added. Parish said that if volunteers who give the medical examinations “find something wrong, they will refer a kid to a doctor. For many of these kids, it’s the only physical they ever get.”

Last year about 500 children were examined at UCLA, and 90 were referred to physicians for medical problems such as heart murmurs, asthma, thyroid enlargement, leg and abdominal pain and cavities.

Parish said that applicants with medical problems are often able to attend the camps and that their participation is tailored to their abilities. “If someone has asthma,” he said, “we won’t ask them to do strenuous exercise.”

Ford said that she enjoys teaching basketball in the program. “I kind of have more fun with the boys because they know a little more about the game, but the girls are eager to learn.”

She said the program provides parents of campers “a little breather” and gives the youths the opportunity to have a good meal.

The program is worthwhile, she said, if it it impresses a few campers that “there’s a lot more out there and they don’t always have to be poor.”