Louisiana: Carver Closer to Building Dream Football Field

Brian Bordainick’s dream football field at New Orleans George Washington Carver is still just that, but it’s moving closer toward reality than it was when his quest to raise money was detailed in a MaxPreps.com story on Dec. 3, 2008.
Back then, Bordainick was trying to raise $200,000 in short order so as to receive a matching grant from the NFL Grassroots Program. Bordainick succeeded, but he still finds himself short $750,000 to complete the $1.85 million project.

“The last thing we want to do is break ground and not get things finished,” Carver’s athletic director told the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

Can One Person Really Make a Difference?

Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not.”

Those words by George Bernard Shaw, and later quoted by Bobby Kennedy, could have been voiced by 23-year old Brian Bordainick, executive director of 9th Ward Field of Dreams.

Bordainick was in Franklinton on Friday, speaking to the members of the Rotary Club, meeting at Mike’s Restaurant. Speaking animatedly, with the sound of clinking knives and forks on china in the background, he told the extraordinary story of the upper 9th Ward’s George Washington Carver High School in New Orleans and how he came to be both their Athletic Director and their superbly quixotic visionary.

Allstate Sugar Bowl Announces Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame Award Winners

The Allstate Sugar Bowl has announced its 2008 Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame award winners, who will be honored at the organization’s annual banquet on Saturday, June 6 at the Louisiana Superdome. The top honorees are legends Larry Schneider and Perry McDonald, who will be inducted into the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame, and UL-Lafayette stars Tyrell Fenroy and Ashley Brignac, who will be presented with the Corbett Awards as the top male and female amateur athletes in the state of Louisiana.

Picking Up the Pieces

Summary: When natural disaster ravages athletic facilities, rebuilding often requires a combination of proper insurance coverage and the kindness of strangers.
Ed Thomas emerged from the basement of his rural north-central Iowa home in the late-afternoon hours of last May 25 to find it had been blown to smithereens by an intense EF5 tornado. The twister, among the worst in state history, packed winds in excess of 200 miles per hour and killed seven people. “We helped neighbors for about 30 minutes,” recalls Thomas, the athletic director and football coach at Aplington-Parkersburg High School, located a few blocks away.

9th Ward Field of Dreams

Along with much of the surrounding area of the Lower 9th Ward, Carver High School in New Orleans was devastated by Hurricaine Katrina in 2005. 

Since then the school has operated out of temporary buildings and their sports fields are nearly non-existent, but thanks to an inspirational 23 year old teacher.athletic director and the support of many members of the community they recently surpassed the $1 million mark putting them more than half way toward their goal of building a brand new football stadium complete with Olympic-quality track.
Originally posted on MajorityMag.com.

Designing in Real Time for a Participation Economy

Everyone’s (or no one’s) favorite redesigned brands, Tropicana and Facebook, came up yet again at this weekend’s Y Conference as Liz Danzico, chair of the new Interaction Design MFA program at the School of Visual Arts, focused on the concept of “designing in real time.” She thinks redesign recalls are about to get a lot more common as designers are more likely to launch alpha or beta versions of experiences and then monitor user behavior to get feedback. “How cool is it that this many people can say, ‘I hate this?’” Danzico said about Facebook. “It’s just a continuous loop [...]

9th Ward Field of Dreams: Hope is a Game Changer

In the still-aching 9th Ward of New Orleans, ideas on community repair are not hard to come by. Good ideas, in fact, aren’t hard to come by. But if you’re out to find those ideas being realized – rebuilding actually happening, – you’ll have to look harder. Lucky for his community, Brian Bordainick of Teach for America is learning the ins and outs of that all-too-rare type of idea, the one made manifest.

In the summer of 2007, 22-years-old and fresh on his requested assignment to a New Orleans school, Bordainick became the youngest high school athletic director in Louisiana’s history. [...]

Field of Dreams gets NFL grant

The hard work and blood and sweat of Rockland native Brian Bordainick has paid off with the announcement that the 9th Ward Field of Dreams Project, which he’s promoted as athletics director at Katrina-ravaged Carver High School in New Orleans, has  been awarded a $200,000 grant to rebuild fields that were an anchor to one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
The grant is part of the National Football League’s Grassroots Program, which this year is allocating $2.5 million in grants to community groups in areas within the NFL’s 32 franchise markets.
The grant, which inspired  Bordainick to undertake a  massive application and [...]

New Orleans’ Own Field Of Dreams

(CBS/ AP) George Washington Carver High School – reduced to a collection of prefabricated buildings that sprang up amid the devastation of Hurricane Katrina – is a fertile ground for dreamers.
Just ask Carver graduate and former National Football League star Marshall Faulk.
“A lot of life-lessons were taught at that school and in that football program,” he said. “My coach got me off the street and taught me to believe in myself. That’s what football can do in a school where kids don’t have a lot of other things.”
Carver is a centerpiece of an ambitious plan to restore pride [...]

Recovering New Orleans school has big dreams

NEW ORLEANS —  George Washington Carver High School — a collection of prefabricated buildings that sprang up amid the devastation of Hurricane Katrina — has always been a fertile ground for dreamers. Just ask Carver graduate and former NFL star Marshall Faulk.
“A lot of life-lessons were taught at that school and in that football program,” he said. “My coach got me off the street and taught me to believe in myself. That’s what football can do in a school where kids don’t have a lot of other things.”
Carver is the centerpiece of an ambitious plan to restore pride in the [...]