“It wasn’t an evil, demonic darkness, just a heavy, sad, empty darkness. The kids were devastated. Throughout the hallways you heard the sobbing.
“Everybody had the same question: ‘How could this have happened? Not him. He always had that big smile.’”
Early that morning, as his father was about to drive him to school, a popular, 16-year-old sophomore basketball player for the Wolverines asked his dad to hold up. He got out of the car, as if he was returning to the house for something he‘d forgotten.
He said he‘d be right back.
Instead, there was a gunshot.
The boy committed suicide.
And the aftershock numbed the entire school.
“They said he‘d been smiling ear to ear the day before in the gym,” Hurt said. “People all wondered what we had missed. What could we have done to prevent this?
“This still weighs heavy on some of our students, and it’s been a couple of years now.”
While this is an extreme case, there are plenty of situations like this in schools across the Miami Valley - where a student’s mental well-being is in question – and that’s one of the things the Coach Beyond training program hopes to address.
Developed by Ohio State University‘s LiFEsports Initiative and now partnered with the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA), the Coach Beyond program is instructing coaches across the state in positive youth development practices with an emphasis on how to support students’ mental health.
The effort has drawn the support of the non-profit, social change agent, the Susan Crown Exchange, and the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
According to Dawn Anderson-Butcher the co-executive director of LiFEsports and a professor in OSU’s College of Social Work, 27,000 of Ohio’s some 70,000 scholastic coaches already have received Coach Beyond training.
Many coaches in the Dayton Public Schools system, thanks especially to the push of DPS athletics director Victoria Jones, have taken part in the Coach Beyond program.
“With some of the crisis we‘ve had – the suicides, the deaths in our community, things like that – this adds another layer to help us respond,” Jones said.
OSU has conducted two workshops here in Dayton and Jones – who’s part of the Coach Beyond state panel and is “a great leader in the state,” Anderson-Butcher said – has helped develop interactive modules for the program’s instruction.
She‘s also hosted webinars for Ohio coaches that featured University of Dayton women’s basketball coach and former UConn and WNBA standout Tamika Williams-Jeter; and Norris Cole, the former Dunbar High star and longtime basketball pro who won two NBA titles with the Miami Heat and now plays for Osos de Manati in Puerto Rico’s top basketball division.
Both Jones and Anderson-Butcher agree that Hurt – who has her own unique story – has been a real proponent of the Coach Beyond program.
“They have given us so many avenues on how to deal with mental health for ourselves and especially our athletes,” Hurt said. “It’s helped us polish up on knowing the signs and symptoms when a kid might not be OK.”
Mental health issues have intensified in schools, in part, because of the overwhelming influence of social media in teenagers’ lives.
It can magnify every personal interaction and because of that, students can be targeted and bullied by anonymous detractors.
And with their immersion into social media, young people often have trouble with face-to-face discussions with their parents, teachers and coaches, Hurt said:
“Often they really don’t know how to communicate in person. Technology has taken that away.
“They don’t know how to say, ‘Hey Mom, I’m not OK’… ‘Dad, I’m not in a good mood.’
“Getting something out of them can be like pulling teeth. Coach Beyond helps you communicate in a way that kids trust you and finally open up.
“I had one of my girls who finally told me, ‘I’m tired and don’t want to be here anymore.’
“She hated it at home. Her mom had died when she was young, and her dad had remarried and now had a family with her stepmom. She felt like an outsider. She felt alone.
“I had another young lady who pulled her sleeve up and showed me her arm. She was a cutter. She had cut her arm all over. I was shocked and asked why she did that.
“She said, ‘One day it actually might work.’
“I talked to her about having bad moments – how you‘re allowed to have them – but just don’t live in them.”
Hurt said some students’ issues can be “as simple as breaking up with a boyfriend. Other times it can be as deep as ‘My momma‘s boyfriend won’t leave me alone and I’m scared.’
“Over the years I’ve heard a little bit of everything.”
One thing though is a certainty now, she said: “Coaching, for lack of a better term, is not just about Xs and Os anymore.”
Recalibrating sports
Anderson-Butcher said she and Dr. Samantha Bates conducted the first-ever national survey in the U.S. to find out coaches’ philosophies and goals. They contacted over 12,000 coaches and one statistic especially stood out.
“We found that 77 percent of coaches for five to 10-year-olds mostly focused on winning games, not (personal) development,” she said.
“At the same time, we found that 60 to 70 percent of kids nationally are dropping out of sports by age 12.”
For those youngsters, they found sports hadn’t been about peers and relationships or improvement or even simple fun. It had been too focused on competition and winning.
The LiFEsports’ aim was to equip coaches and athletic directors with the resources they need to coach beyond that.
“We also wanted coaches to know how to identify the signs and symptoms of suicide, anxiety and depression,” Anderson Butcher said. “What do they do? Who do they call?
“In the process we hope to help coaches foster better team environments where there‘s a culture in which the young people feel like they belong.”
Along with the Coach Beyond program, LiFEsports – which stands for Learning in Fitness and Education through Sports – runs a year-long youth development camp on the OSU campus that serves over 800 youngsters from Central Ohio, many of whom come from poverty.
Through sports-based programs, Anderson-Butcher said they teach skills like self-control, effort, teamwork, and social responsibility while involving them in eight different sports, things like lacrosse and tennis, sports they might not otherwise be exposed to:
“We‘re trying to recalibrate sports so kids can get a more positive developmental experience and, ultimately, keep playing.”
‘It’s just you and me’
Juanida Hurt is an atypical coach who brings her own varied life experiences to the job.
Growing up mostly in the Madden Hills area – the neighborhood where Dunbar is located – she‘s the daughter of Jaqueline Jones and Kevin Hurt, the drummer for the popular early 1980s funk band, Dayton, which had hits like Hot Fun in the Summertime, Cutie Pie and The Sound of Music.
She and her sister were raised by their single-parent mom who worked two jobs.
At Patterson Co-op, Hurt ran track and was a majorette with the marching band.
She became pregnant at 18, but said her daughter died at birth.
Two years later the first of her three sons – Joseph Scates – was born.
“I remember we were in the car when he was about one and I looked over at him and said ‘Phew, what are we doing? It’s just you and me,’” she said.
“I was 20 years old, and we grew up together. He made me figure it out.”
Today, that little boy is an accomplished 25-year-old, 6-foot-2, 210-pound athlete.
As a celebrated four-star receiver for the Dunbar football team – senior year he had nearly 1,000 receiving yards and 20 touchdown catches – he was offered scholarships by Ohio State, Alabama, Cincinnati and several other name programs but has admitted his early academic struggles caused some schools to eventually back off.
He played collegiately at Iowa State and the University of Memphis, after which he signed as an undrafted free agent with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Waived at the end of last preseason, he joined the Memphis Showboats of the United Football League for three months, was cut, and then spent a month this spring with the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League before being released two weeks ago.
Hurt’s 20-year-old son J’aun is about to become a certified electrician and J’Shaun is nine.
After high school Juanida, who’s now 45, attended the Carousel Beauty College in Dayton and today owns her own salon – Hair by Ja – on Dennison Avenue.
Her first coaching venture was as an instructor for the popular street drill team, The Gem City Strutters. Six years ago she started coaching the cheer team at Dunbar and then became an assistant track coach for the boys’ and girls’ teams before becoming the girls’ head coach two years ago.
In the fall she‘ll begin teaching cosmetology at Dunbar.
Being a longtime hair stylist has been great prep work for becoming a high school coach she admitted:
“When I learned to do hair, they always told us. ‘You‘re more than a hair stylist, you‘re a therapist, a best friend, and a counselor. You need to listen as they open up to you.
“Sometimes you‘re the only person these people can talk to. And sometimes you‘re the only person who can make them feel good about themselves.
“When you‘re done, you can turn them around in the chair to face the mirror and say, ‘Look at you! I like that on you. You look good!’
“In the salon, we like to joke. We‘re not beauticians, we call ourselves magicians. We transform somebody. They come in one way and leave another.
“I like to make people feel good about themselves.”
Human mode
“When I ask a kid who’s having issues what’s going on, the thing at the top of the list is home life and not having a good relationship with their parents,” Hurt said. “A lot of kids don’t have a connection at home, or they have no support.
“Some kids’ parents are working so they‘re not at home. On the flip side, some kids might have parents who don’t care or are out partying and pick their boyfriends or girlfriends over their kids.
“The number two issue is bullying. It happens daily and often over nothing. Someone is picked on for how they dress or who they spoke to. And then someone says, because I don’t like you, I’m going to tell all your business or just make it up.
“It’s a petty game, but it can have serious consequences.”
The Coach Beyond program helps coaches recognize these problems and appropriately address them.
Hurt said the old ways of thinking – “I’m the adult. Be quiet and do what I say,” – don’t work today:
“You have to be more observant. Sometimes you need to step out of the coaching mode and into the human mode.”
She said there have been times she‘s told her team: “Today‘s practice is going to be a little different. Let’s sit down and just talk.
“When I’ve noticed they‘re a little edgy, I’ve given them the floor, and they talk through the issues they have with each other. We‘ve had beaucoup crying sessions in the cheer room. And I’d say 80 percent of the time there‘s a happy ending.”
Among her team bonding efforts, Hurt takes her cheer team to a church service twice a year, once in the fall and once in the winter.
Last fall, when they visited Revival Center Ministries on Oakridge Drive, it was September 1st, which happened to be the birthday of the daughter she lost.
“That day, all my girls made an altar call,” she said. “They went up and they were hugging and crying. It was a beautiful day at church.
“Someone there who knew my past came up to me and said, ‘When you had your daughter in ’98, you had no idea that one day God was going to give you all these other daughters to care for. Your daughter was the seed and right here you are reaping what was sewn.’
“I thought, ‘Man, that’s deep,’ and I cried my eyes out.”
Hurt’s approach sometimes bears unexpected fruit.
“I remember on Senior Night, they asked one of the kids. ‘What was your best part of high school?’
“And she said, ‘The best thing was meeting my cheer coach.’
“Her mom pulled me aside and said, ‘If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know if we would have made it here today.’”
It’s moments like that that bring light to the darkness that settled on Dunbar that one terrible February morning two years ago.
For Hurt, it goes back to those magician days when she‘d turn someone‘s chair toward the mirror so they can see what they have become.
It allows her to say: “Look at you! I like that on you. You look good!”
It’s part of being a Coach Beyond.
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