FROM: Anita DeFrantz, president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, pictured above with children playing basketball at foundation office.
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DeFrantz's organization uses profits from the 1984 Olympics for various sports programs. A 1976 bronze medal winner in Olympic rowing and the first African American female rower to compete in the Olympics, she serves on the executive board of the International Olympic Committee.
Her Sports Corps of teen-agers would train, coach and referee athletic games for younger children around the city.
She argues that school busing for integration has produced an unintended negative effect on parental involvement in neighborhood schools: Too many families live too far away from their children's campuses to volunteer for after-school recreation programs. At the same time, increasing economic pressures make it difficult to find parents with time for coaching and refereeing. The result is a shortage of sports and recreational opportunities.
However, Los Angeles has no shortage of teen-agers who could be trained as coaches and refs. Nor does it have a shortage of schoolyards and school athletic fields that are locked up on evenings and weekends. Her foundation, she suggests, could develop and offer classes in various sports; the classes would be similar to water safety courses offered by the Red Cross to young people who want to be junior lifeguards. The teen-agers might then be paid a modest wage, funded perhaps by government, charities and minimal participation fees from children's families.
