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.

Bordainick, at 23 the youngest AD in the state of Louisiana, came to Carver after graduating from the University of Georgia and taking a position offered by Teach for America, an organization that places graduating college seniors in the worst schools across the nation, giving them a chance to make a difference. That, he has done, in spades.

A New York native, he arrived in the city two years after Katrina, to be met by a school operating out of trailers, with the ravaged school building standing as a testament to the storm’s devastating fury. With little fanfare and less warning, he was sent into a classroom to teach. First, he had to ask, “What am I teaching?” From there, he hit the ground running.

That first year “was an interesting year,” he said, though marred by a good bit of violence. He was asked to coach the girls basketball team, something he had little or no experience in, but it was a good opportunity to engage the students and get out of the classroom, he pointed out.

Then, before the basketball season began, the school’s athletic director quit, and Bordainick was approached to take the job. His reply? “How hard can it be?” Famous last words, he said, as he inherited a program with no money, no uniforms, no equipment — nothing really. But for Bordainick, it was a challenge and he took it on with enthusiasm.

About 500 people attended Carver’s first basketball game, the first athletic contest at the school since Katrina. He bought shirts — Carver Basketball, they proclaimed — for the kids with the first $200 he got, which resulted in an almost immediate change in the kids’ attitudes.

After basketball, he started a baseball program, even though the administration was telling him to slow down. “If someone tells you to slow down,” he said, “it must mean you’re doing something right.”

Basketball and baseball were the first sports to come back at Carver, then track, which Bordainick noted costs very little to equip. This past year, he started a football program. Only 13 kids showed up for the first meeting, but Bordainick and coach Shyrone Carey, a football standout at Archbishop Shaw and Louisiana State University, ended up fielding 30 players last summer, and the dream for a new football field was born.

Now staff and students, led by the indefatigable Bordainick, are working tirelessly to raise money for a football field at the high school that still remains in shambles in the 3000 block of Higgins Boulevard.

After a myriad of fundraising events, such as selling bricks for $100 each, going after and receiving a $200,000 matching grant by the NFL, and another $100,000 donated by Nike, the kids and Bordainick have raised an astonishing $1,057,829 toward their goal of $1,847,568. More money is needed, but the groundbreaking ceremony for the field is scheduled for mid-July. At that time, Bordainick’s dream, his vision, will begin to become a reality. Go to the Web site — www.9thWardFieldofDreams.com — and discover what just one person, with a vision, can accomplish.

To quote Bordainick on his Web site: “Together we can prove that against formidable odds, a few people crazy enough to believe in their own power to create change can overcome a seemingly impossible challenge.”

As written by Jan Gibson Daily News