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History
Since 1990, the Midwest Trailblazers Youth Program has been providing academic support, healthy relationships, mentoring, healthy competition, counseling, cultural enrichment, tutoring, and physical activity to its participants.
T
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Trailblazers began in June of 1990 when Ivan Gilreath, Fred Franklin, Brent Williams, and Darryl Lowe began offering a weekly practice for a 6th grade boys team. These practices focused on fundamentals, hard work, commitment, and discipline.
Parents discovered quickly that these coaches were very different than the typical recreation coaches, and that their children were learning how to think as well as play basketball.
Parents asked these individuals to form a team.
After twenty years of operations, the Trailblazers set out to chart and implement a new program structure to better meet the complex needs of participating youth.
This Strategic Plan—
Vision 20/12—focuses on the following areas:
1. Relationships: Design and implement a formal mentoring program, and increase the number of mentees while maintaining the 1 to 4 mentor/mentee ratio.
Teams, coaches, mentees and mentors continue to grow up together (“looping”).
2. Resilience & Rigor: Strengthen and standardize the teaching of the Trailblazers' values, life skills, personal and social responsibility, and the value of education.
Design and implement a new academic program focused on attendance, grades, discipline, and support.
Use the basketball court as the classroom and training ground for life and provide participants with
out of town trips, college visits, speakers, and other experiential
learning
opportunities.
3. Club Membership: Expand membership, create a brand name via Blazer Gear and players’, coaches’, and parents’ conduct, and implement the “One Blazer” principle.
The Trailblazers uses sports as the hook to its mentoring, academic support, and character building programs.
Hundreds of studies are now widely available on the benefits of challenging youth, especially at-risk youth, in sports settings and providing them with long term mentoring relationships. Which in turn will improve physical and mental health, improve school test scores, reduce stress, increase self-confidence and awareness, improve conflict resolution skills, significantly reduce teen pregnancy, and foster community leaders.
The Trailblazers’ unique brand of youth development programming has evolved over a twenty year history from using the basketball court as the
classroom through teachable moments to providing mentoring, charter building, and experiential learning programs that inspire hope, change lives, and provide guidance.
Mentors and mentees have in depth conversations, attend meetings, practices, events, and just hang out on average six (6) to eight (8) hours per week over a five (5) year period.
Every Trailblazer understands that good grades and behavior are prerequisites to being a part of this noble organization.
TRAILBLAZERS ALUMNI
If you know Trailblazers Alumni please direct them to this site.
2007
Jasmine Johnson - University of Houston
2008
Shelly Martin - Northwest Missouri State
Mia Gilreath - Southwest Baptist
Brittanie Gunn - Buena Vista
Kelsey Anderson - Bennedictine
2009
Kelsey Hansen - South Dakota State (Volleyball)
Stacey Havakost - Hastings College
Kelsey Lane - University of Nebraska Kearney
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