UGA Fights Against Cancer

By Joe Willeford

On Friday, hundreds of people came together at the University of Georgia to unite as a community in the fight against cancer. Relay for Life, created by the American Cancer Society, is an annual event to raise money for cancer research, spread cancer awareness, celebrate the lives of survivors, and remember those who lost their lives to cancer.

This year, it took place at the UGA Track on Lumpkin Street. People of all ages, sexes and races came together in a display of solidarity.

“The power of community is truly amazing, and it is absolutely on display here tonight,” said Christine Santayana, a sophomore from Virginia.

This year’s Relay for Life was the biggest ever since its creation in 1999 - but this could not have been possible without the help of many individuals and groups throughout Athens.

Lo Asidro, a senior from LaGrange, Ga. is a member of the “spirit committee.” For an event like Relay that lasts all night, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., it is a hard job keeping people motivated and spirits high. “Our aim is to make sure that everyone stays awake, stays excited,” said Asidro.

Groups such as Asidro’s spirit committee have been meeting for months to prepare for the overnight event. Fraternities, sororities, clubs, businesses, and other organizations throughout Athens donate money, assist with organizing the event and encourage others to join in their efforts.

There is definitely no lack of enthusiasm for Relay for Life at UGA.

Kevin Madsen, a freshman at Washington University in St. Louis, is a member of the American Cancer Society’s collegiate scout team. He visits and observes Relays across the nation to see what works especially well and what needs improvement. In his opinion, the Relay at UGA is one of the best in the nation.

“It amazes me the energy this campus has for Relay. Just being here, it’s really empowering.”

High levels of emotion were present everywhere Friday. Surrounding the track were candles, each representing a loved one who had lost the fight with cancer.

“The [candle] ceremony was a very powerful thing, to see all these people come together and honor those who have fought – and lost to – cancer,” reflected Madsen. The sheer number of candles surrounding the track at UGA was a small testament to the devastation cancer causes.

As Asidro said, “It’s rare to find someone who doesn’t know someone that has been affected by cancer.”

Having the support of family and friends is crucial to one’s fight against cancer, a point that was made throughout the night. Kaylea Notarthomas, a junior from Atlanta, spoke about her experience with thyroid cancer. “All the support I had on the journey far outweighed the negatives,” she said. “I couldn’t have done any of it without my support system.”

Melissa Baxter, a sophomore from Tipton, Ga., is also a cancer survivor. “Relay is a very special night for me and my family,” said Baxter. Her favorite part of the night is the survivor lap, when survivors of cancer walk a lap around the track, surrounded by cheering supporters.

“The survivor lap is a time when all the people who supported you for so long can come out and show you just how much your battle means to them.”

Libby Cordell, team leader for the sorority Alpha Delta Pi, saw the effects of cancer first-hand when one of her best friends, Caelyn Brady, was diagnosed with cancer their junior year of high school. “It opened my eyes,” said Cordell. “Caelyn doesn’t talk or complain much, but when she told me what she was going through, I felt like I needed to do something.”

In college, Cordell was immediately drawn to Relay for Life. At first, she didn’t know what to expect from the event, but quickly found out. “Once I was there, I loved it,” said Cordell. “It was such a great experience for me that it just made me want to do anything I could to make it better next year.”

With continued effort and participation, the sky is the limit for Relay for Life. This year’s event featured the most participants in its history – and also raised the most money with a little over $306,000. For more information on Relay for Life at UGA go to ugarelay.org

There's Just Something About Sport

“There’s just something about sport.” This line was the mantra of Dr. Richard Lapchick’s speech to a group of roughly 50 interested UGA students, professors, and fans Tuesday, April 20. The College of Education’s Department of Kinesiology welcomed Dr. Lapchick as part of the 2010 Clifford Lewis Scholar Lecture series. The audience sat at rapt attention as they listened to Dr. Lapchick, who has been nicknamed the “racial consciousness of sports”, discuss his experiences and lifelong efforts to combat racism within sports.

“My journey on the issue of race and sport started when I was five years old,” said Lapchick, the current Director of the University of Central Florida’s DeVos Sport Business Management Program and frequent ESPN contributing reporter. “There’s something about sports that makes us different.”

Lapchick is the son of the legendary Joe Lapchick, the Original Celtics center and later coach of the New York Knicks. Lapchick explained how his first exposure to the hate of racism centered on his father. Joe Lapchick, then the coach of the New York Knicks, signed the NBA’s first African-American, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, in 1950. Lapchick recalls his five0year-old self picking up the phone on numberous occasions only to hear “nigger lover, nigger lover” in reference to his father. But his passion for civil rights truly ignited after a visit to a German concentration camp as part of a European trip to the 1960 Olympic Games. “Seeing what people would do to each other for differences in race and religion made basketball seem a little less important for the rest of my life,” muses Lapchick. Yet, once he got to Rome for the Olympics, he remembers the exhilarating feeling of seeing people of all different races, religions, ethnicities, nationalities, and cultures coming together peacefully to participate in the international games. “Sports bring people together in ways other things don’t,” he said with a smile.

Lapchick’s passion for sports runs deeper than just love for the game or a rooted family history: it’s the colorblind unity of sports that breaks down discriminating barriers. He shared with his audience his favorite part of sports: the huddle. “In the huddle,” he said, “when you’re a member of the team, it doesn't matter if you’re white, black, Latino, Catholic, you can’t win if you don’t act like a team.” He went on to talk about the renewing power of sports through the scheduled baseball game on the first Friday after the Virigina Tech shootings of 2007. “[Initially] The president [of Virginia Tech] got a lot of criticism for that [allowing the game to go on] but he knew something,” said Lapchick, going on to explain how the usually modestly attended baseball game was packed with over 1,000 fans. Lapchick praised the event, and how sports had the power to unite and heal a damaged community. “When they got there, life suddenly had renewal.”

Lapchick went on to encourage students to pick up the torch left to them by past generations and continue to promote equality in sports and the nation as a whole. “This generation is partially in control of sports. Many [student athletes] athletes are very community and religiously centered and they’re giving back to their communities in a variety of ways. Athletes really rallied to help the city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.”

“You never just change one person,” he says, a lesson to remember.

Something about sports.

“There is something about sports.” So went Richard Lapchick’s message to a group of over 100 people at the Georgia Center’s Master Hall on Tuesday, April 20. The words served as a sort of theme or motto for his lecture. “You can’t win if you don’t play as a team,” he said. “Imagine if you could project that concept of the huddle to [everything else].”

Richard Lapchick was tabbed to give the 2010 Clifford Lewis Scholar Lecture, an event sponsored by the UGA College of Education’s department of kinesiology. The lecture, in honor of the late associate dean and physical education professor Clifford Lewis, focused on two subjects of Lapchick’s expertise: race and sport.

From the segregation of basketball players in the mid-twentieth century to the current discrepancies of race in sports management, Lapchick, an author, professor, and racial pioneer, talked about how he has seen sports change in his lifetime. The son of former Boston Celtics basketball player and New York Knicks coach Joe Lapchick, the younger Lapchick spent his whole life immersed in sports and racial inequality.

As a child, Lapchick saw his father berated by racists for signing Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton, the NBA’s first African American signee. Years later, Lapchick would face a public, racial fight of his own. In 1978, the civil rights activist helped to lead a sports boycott of South Africa. While protesting the country’s Davis Cup team’s scheduled game in Tennessee, Lapchick was severely beaten and cut for his cause.

22-year-old University of Georgia student Josh Patterson said it was easy to see why Lapchick was chosen to give this year’s Clifford Lewis Scholar Lecture: “I am excited to hear about what he has to say about sports being a common ground between races because I feel like athletes have potential to do a lot of good for race relations.”

Lapchick began his lecture, titled “Sport: A Bridge Across the Racial Divide,” by congratulating the University of Georgia for hiring the first African American athletic director in the Southeastern Conference, adding, “Hopefully that change is not reversible.”

His opening gave the audience an idea as to what the rest of Lapchick’s lecture would entail: a frank discussion of race, sports, responsibility, and accountability.

Having paid for his cause in blood before, Lapchick provided the students and faculty on hand with a rare commitment towards both sports and race. From Eddie Robinson to the Virginia Tech campus shootings to the New Orleans Saints winning the recent Super Bowl, Lapchick touched on situation after situation in which sports helped to bring a community back together, despite differences in race, religion, gender, and socioeconomic class.

Lapchick, who started the nationally ranked DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida, also spoke of the importance of leadership and standing up for justice, a principle he believed could slowly change the world.

“You never change just one person’s life. It’s a circle of growth… That’s the power we all have,” he said, pausing before adding, “If we use it.”

If he did nothing else in his lecture, Lapchick at least left his audience wondering one thing: “Maybe there really is something about sports.”

Speech at UGA Article

By: Brooke McMillan

“What will you have done to make people want to come say thank you?” asked Richard Lapchick who spoke to a combination of students and fans on April 20 at the 2010 Clifford Lewis Scholar Lecture. The lecture was sponsored by the College of Education's Department of Kinesiology at UGA. A crowd of about 60 sat and listened closely as Lapchick passionately spoke about his experiences and efforts to decrease racism specifically in the sports arena.

Lapchick received his Bachelor of Arts in 1967 from St. John’s University and his doctorate in international race relations from University of Denver in 1973. He is credited with writing more than 450 articles over the years and continues to write for companies such as ESPN. Lapchick has delivered more than 2700 speeches in his lifetime thus far. Many awards and honors have come his way over the years, and in 1994 he was specially invited to Nelson Mandela’s inauguration.

Throughout his captivating lecture, Lapchick constantly inserted the phrase “there’s something about sport,” stressing the great impact sports have on people. As the son of famous Celtic player and recognized basketball coach, Joe Lapchick, young Lapchick felt the expectation to grow up and play basketball. He attended basketball camp in Europe at the age of 14 where he experienced his first exposal to race and racism. Ever since, he has made large efforts to decrease racism.

Through his father, Lapchick learned that racism was a huge issue in sports. His father experienced non-integrated basketball teams, and learned about racism through watching sports. Once Richard Lapchick viewed racism in his generation, it was apparent that integration in the coaching position was very hard to achieve. Lapchick seemed very excited to deliver his speech at the University of Georgia boasting the fact that “Georgia had the guts to hire the first African American athletic director in the SEC.”

Lapchick focused largely on those who influenced his life, and those he has been exposed to while on his journey through life. He emphasized the great impact sports have on people’s life such as the Saints win after the devastation Louisiana experienced due to hurricane Katrina. Lapchick was raised to hate the New York Yankees. Even so, he rooted for the New York Yankees to win the World Series after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, destroyed much of the state and the hearts of many people.

The importance of change was expressed through the words of Lapchick. He is a man who adovocates change, and the belief that people have the capacity to influence those who continue hate crimes across the world. The audience nodded their heads in agreeance with Lapchick as he expressed the need for change. He said “the reason I wanted to be here today is because you can be difference makers,” leaving his listeners to think about how influential each person can be in the world.

Study of sports race relations leader speaks to University students

By Mitch Blomert

A national leader for the study of race relations in sports spoke at the University of Georgia Wednesday, encouraging students to be the difference-maker in the eradication of racism in the nation.

Dr. Richard Lapchick, director of the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida, discussed the history and solutions to racism in sports and in general life as part of the 2010 Clifford Lewis Lecture titled “Sport: A Bridge Across the Racial Divide,” at Masters Hall in the Georgia Center.

Lapchick, son of Boston Celtics center and former New York Knicks head coach Joe Lapchick, discussed the race issues his father faced as a National Basketball Association Coach, then the hatred he received himself when he became the American leader of a sports boycott in South Africa during apartheid.

Lapchick also explained how sports acted as a commonplace of people, where racism and hatred often subsided in favor of competition, as it did at a Virginia Tech baseball game following the shootings that killed 32 people on campus in 2007 and in February’s Super Bowl XLIV, which “elevated spirits like nothing else possibly could.”

“Something about sport makes it different,” Lapchick said.

Lapchick emphasized that the current generation of college students are tomorrow’s leaders, and can continue the stand against racism that Lapchick and his father started in sports.

“My father’s generation developed integration of basketball,” he said. “You can be the difference. That’s why I started to talk to student audiences—about passing the torch to you.”

Lapchick also recollected his time with long-time Grambling State University football coach Eddie Robinson, whom he co-wrote the book Never Before, Never Again with in 1999. He described Robinson and highly influential in integrating sports by display kind acts to his wife in front of his players.

“He always had dinner with his wife and held her hand, which he showed to his players,” Lapchick said.

When Lapchick isn’t speaking the colleges across the country or managing the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at Central Florida, he is also part of the Hope For Stanley Foundation, which promotes diversity and ethics in sports and releases an annual report card that tracks the long-term trends of diversity in coach and management.

Lapchick stated that current racial statistics among NCAA Division-I coaches is 91-percent white among men’s sports and 90-percent among women’s sports. However, he also noted that the Georgia is the first school to hire a black Athletic Director when they appointed Damon Evans to the position in 2003.

Lapchick, who received his Ph.D. in international race relations from the University of Denver in 1973, also founded the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in 1984. He is also a frequent columnist for ESPN.com and the Orlando Sentinel, with over 500 columns published. He is also one of only 200 guests to former South African president Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in 1994.

There’s Something About Sports. - Holly Hess

Like any other dreary day in Athens, students walked about campus covered in rain coats and boasting their umbrellas. UGA’s Georgia Center was unusually crowded with students in the lobby, all drifting towards the tables of exquisitely prepared free food. Comments of approval could be heard pertaining to the teriyaki chicken and freshly made fruit punch. Students of all types gathered at 4 p.m. to hear a lecture titled: 'Sport: A Bridge Across the Racial Divide.’ As part of the Clifford Lewis Lecture series, Dr. Richard Lapchick came to share his expertise on sports issue sand racial inequalities within sports. Brendan Cosgrove, a junior broadcast news major commented on the issue at hand: “I’m fascinated by the racial dynamics in sports, especially the NBA. I’m interested to see what a professional’s take on the situation is.”
“Nigger lover, nigger lover” were some of the first words Lapchick heard describing his dad when he was only five years old. This was about the same time his love of basketball took hold. In 1950, Lapchick’s father, coach of the New York Knicks, signed three African -American players to his team making them the first team to sign athletes of color. After this incident, Lapchick moved with his mother and sister to Europe for a few years where they visited a Nazi concentration camp, a crucial point in his life. Somberly recalling that time, he mentioned, “I was never the same.” After seeing the cruelty of human kind, he went to Rome and saw how people from all over the world would join together because of one thing- sports. Lapchick quickly realized the avenue he needed to go through to bring all walks of life together. Instead of pursuing his love for basketball as a player, he became an expert on sports issues and a pioneer for racial equality through the use of sports.
“Everyone has a problem you don’t know about” is how he explained many of the tragedies mentioned. He took the audience back to a time in his daughter’s life when tragic incidents were happening daily. A close friend to the Lapchick’s family tied his own two kids to the car seat and waited to pull onto the interstate until a tractor-trailer came, ultimately killing himself and his own two children. Paired with this was a classmate’s suicide, a teacher’s death, an attempted murder, and a close friend’s father committing suicide into oncoming traffic. Not to mention the beginning of the week when his daughter was almost kidnapped by a naked man in a car. The crowd was heavy and somber after all of these horrible stories. But Lapchick’s point was simply this: there’s always going to be bad in the world. Everyone has power to influence, but how will we choose to use it?
Speaking as a writer for ESPN.com, creator of the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida and the founder of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, Lapchick provided the audience hard evidence of white dominance behind the African-American athletes in the NBA. An astounding 91 percent of Division 1 basketball coaches are Caucasian males. Dissecting the different percentages between Caucasian and African-American coaches as well as the male to female coaches was mind boggling. Lapchick’s passion for finding equality in all areas of life was obvious.
“There’s something about sports” was repeated many times by Lapchick. He also made it clear many good people out there are doing things to help the world, specifically with regards to racial equality. However, he charged the students with, “Will it end, how will it end, and if it’s gonna end, what are you gonna do to help it?” Upon concluding his insight and opinions about racial discrimination, the audience appeared supportive of Lapchick’s lecture by giving him a warm, closing applause.

Speech at UGA article by Jonathan Shealy

“There’s something about sport.” This was a phrase continually reiterated by Richard Lapchick, the keynote speaker at the 2010 Clifford Lewis Scholar Lecture, sponsored by the Department of Kinesiology at UGA. It showed his passion for sports was almost as strong as his passion for trying to bring about racial equality. A mix of Sports Business and Journalism majors, as well as many other interested students came together on April 20 at the Georgia Center on a rainy afternoon to listen to one of the most influential voices on race issues in sports over the last few decades.

Lapchick is the creator of the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida, founder of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, and writer for ESPN.com. He has become well known for his efforts in promoting racial equality, especially in opposing the South African apartheid through a sports boycott. In a video shown as an introduction to the speech former Bengals Linebacker Reggie Williams said that Lapchick “put his life on the line for causes, that quite honestly, affect others more than himself.” This is literally true as he was once attacked by two masked men for opposing South Africa’s participation in the Davis Cup due to apartheid.

Lapchick’s lecture, entitled “Sport: a bridge across the Racial Divide”, began as he expressed his appreciation for Georgia and its athletic program, especially for hiring an African American athletic director, Damon Evans, which according to some statistics he would later read, is a rarity in the NCAA, where 93 percent of athletic directors in Division I are white.

“There’s something about sport that makes us different from others in regular life”, Lapchick mused. Lapchick, though white, experienced racial discrimination at an early age, as his father, then the coach of the New York Knicks, received criticism and threats for signing Nat Clifton, the first African American to sign an NBA contract. When he was older he attended a basketball camp where the one black player received so much racial hatred from one of the white players that Lapchick stood up for him and promptly got knocked out. That player was Lewis Alcindor, Jr, or as he is now more commonly known as Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, the NBA’s all time leading scorer.

Lapchick realized that the arena of sports was a great equalizer between races and provided a powerful avenue for making a statement. “In that huddle, you’re part of a team, it doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, protestant, muslim, catholic, young, old, gay, straight, male female, you can’t win if you don’t work together.”

The sports boycott of South Africa proved more effective than boycotts of oil or other goods because as Lapchick put it, “you can smuggle in oil and all that other stuff, but you can’t play sports in the dark”. Lapchick was one of a select number of people invited to Nelson Mandela’s inauguration for his efforts and he said that Mandela later told him that one of the reasons he was eager to come back was bring sports back to his country.

Lapchick’s main goal, however, was to motivate his audience to take a stand against racial injustice today. He said that while the players are now equal, those running and covering sports is still vastly skewed. Lapchick read some recent statistics that said that 95 percent of sports editors and 87 percent of reporters are white, as well as 91 percent of Division I coaches, and 9 percent of hate crimes occur on college campuses.

Lapchick said his focus has changed to passing the torch to a new generation, which is why he speaks to college students. He continued to speak on how even something as simple as just trying to see how those around us may be in need of help; “everybody has a problem that you don’t know about”. As he concluded he implored the new generation of students to rise up and take a stand: “the definition of a leader is someone who stands up for justice and doesn’t stand in its path.” He received a round of applause as he finished and everyone in the audience seemed supportive of his efforts.