Where ‘Bad’ Kids Form Good Teams : At Tough Nevada Reform School, They Took Big Gamble on Sports

Independence High School won the Nevada State Wrestling championship the past two years, was runner-up in basketball in 1983 and has a competitive football and track team.

Yet the Independence High Colts have no cheerleaders, no school song, no homecoming, no yearbook, no annual awards banquets, no letterman jackets.

No college or university recruits its athletes.

Parents seldom show up to see their sons play.

No one at the school is on the team more than one season.

Ed Burgess, 49, spent years trying to win approval for the school to be part of the Nevada Interscholastic Athletic Assn. League.

Burgess appealed to the state Legislature for funds to build a football field and a gymnasium for Independence High School. Some politicians said taxpayers would frown on spending state money for something they might consider frivolous.

Independence High finally got a $1 million gym and a good football field and five years ago was accepted to participate in league competition with other high schools in Nevada.

Independence High is not your run of the mill high school.

It is Nevada’s only state school for delinquents, otherwise known as the Nevada Youth Training Center at Elko, a reform school with an average population of 150.

Ed Burgess has been superintendent of the training center since 1960.

“Nevada is one of few states in America with a state youth training center playing in regular league competition with other high schools,” Burgess said.

“We feel this shows a young man that he can participate and be socially accepted. We want to improve these kids’ image of themselves.”

To Bill Wilkins, 42, psychologist at the center, being part of a regular high school athletic program “teaches the kids to learn to cooperate, how to deal with frustrations and they have a lot of frustrations, how to follow instructions and take orders.

“It gives them an awful lot of self-esteem. This is something special providing most of them with some kind of positive identification for the first time in their lives.”

Leon Rider, 42, wrestling, track and football coach at Independence High the past 13 years.: “Every now and then we come up with a good team. This year we’re moved up to the A division playing the largest schools in the state, so competition is that much tougher.”

The football team travels throughout much of the sparsely populated state playing its away games. It hasn’t won a game this year.

Average length of stay at the center is 7 1/2 months with very few here more than a year. So, every year there is an entirely new football, track and wrestling team.

“These kids have no background in sports. For most of them there was no participation whatsoever in school activities before coming here. Other coaches would never put up with them,” Rider said.

“It isn’t easy putting together a new team each year. We have a tough time bringing it all together. It’s not easy to motivate these kids considering where they’re coming from. They have chips on their shoulders. They’re mad at society, mad at the world.”

But Rider molds them into hard-playing competitors.

“You can see their attitudes change. Within two or three weeks they’re no longer mad at everybody. One of my biggest disappointments is that once released and away from the discipline and our influence here, few go on with sports. For most of the young men this is their one and only chance to be on a high school team of any kind.”

He mentioned a running back a couple of years ago who had the potential, he believes, to make the best college teams in the country. “Two months after he left here he got himself in a scrape and wound up getting shot in the face,” Rider recalls.

The classrooms and hallways of Independence High are spotless. The young men are quiet, well mannered.

“We get letters back from principals of other schools commenting: ‘Hey, your kids are the best behaved in the league,’ ” the coach says.

“Our boys have never embarrassed us in any way out in the community when competing in sports.”

Nevada newspapers treat the athletes from Independence High just like they do other athletes.

“If any of our young men do exceptionally well, newspapers covering the game will focus attention on those individual players with stories about their accomplishments using their names and using their pictures,” Burgess said.

“The news media identifies the school as Independence High School although everybody knows the team is from NYTC. We believe it is important to the boy that he gets recognition for a positive activity.”

Chris Gagne, 16, an outstanding left tackle on this year’s team, said that he never went out for sports in high school “because I was too busy messing around.

“I never played football before. Being on the team here makes me feel better about myself, helps me have a better attitude toward other people. You know this is the first time in my life I have ever had people rooting for me.”

Says Jeff Smith, 17, the team’s excellent running back: “We’re accepted by the football players from the other schools. They never give us a bad time. Of course, we’re envious of them being able to do things we can’t do when the game is finished.”

Coach Rider told how his players look forward to the long bus rides and trips to other schools.

“Our hope is that this experience is not only rewarding to them and enriches their lives but helps them to become decent law abiding citizens.”