Raiders’ Clinic Tackles Drug Problem

The tragic death of Len Bias is tainted by a hint of drugs.

Once again, the athletic community throws up its collective hands as it watches helplessly while a promising young life is destroyed with the suspicion of drugs lurking menacingly nearby.

What to do? What to do?

Well coincidentally, this weekend a trio of football stars has an answer. It all began about a year ago when Los Angeles Raiders Todd Christensen, Dokie Williams and Vann McElroy decided to stop merely agonizing over such tragedies and start organizing. So they formed the Athletes For Youth Foundation.

The result of that effort can be seen this weekend at Birmingham High in Van Nuys where the three are among the Raiders who are staging a two-day clinic involving about 1,750 high school football players from the Los Angeles Unified School District. All 49 high schools in the district were invited and 45 are sending contingents.

It’s become a political event now. Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) was on hand to officially open the activities Saturday and Mayor Tom Bradley has declared this Athletes For Youth Weekend.

But beyond the glare of the cameras and the speeches of the politicians--circumstances sure to turn off many high schoolers--Christensen and Co. hope to get through to kids and make a difference.

Not just about drugs, although that subject is sure to come up. The Raiders will be talking about proper nutrition, conditioning, education and its relationship to athletics and anything else these kids want to talk about.

When they hear a lecture on those subjects from their teachers or parents, many kids tend to yawn and tune out. When they hear it from professional football players, the message has a lot better chance of getting through.

“I think it’s inspiring for these youngsters to be around the Raiders,” Cranston said. “Maybe these kids that are here can set an example for others.”

This could be pretty serious stuff. An image is at stake here. The guys in silver and black may not be able to remain those ferocious monsters the rest of the National Football League has come to know and hate if they keep doing things like this.

But that’s OK with the kids on hand for the clinics. They are learning that underneath the helmet and shoulder pads are real-life human beings they can talk to and learn from.

“I call it the right of passage,” Christensen said. “You can talk all you want about playing football and fighting against drugs but that’s just speculating. When these kids meet the Raiders, they are talking to people who have actually done it. Whatever they want to talk about, we’ll talk about. These kids are not stupid. They are out here trying to improve their lives. This can’t do anything but good.

“And when you’ve got people like Sen. Cranston out here, it validates that this is for real, not some fly-by-night thing. Nobody has ever done anything like this before. Certainly nobody has ever done anything like this for free.”

That was made possible thanks to a grant from the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, the organization that has taken over for the now-defunct Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. Surplus funds from the 1984 Los Angeles Games are dispersed through this foundation, and it gave Christensen’s group a $33,000 grant to put on the weekend clinics. The money was used for an insurance policy, buses to transport the athletes, food and beverages and anything else that came up.

And all this is only the beginning.

Next year, the Athletes For Youth Foundation hopes to stage similar clinics in every NFL cities, involving four players from each local team.

For the Raiders helping out, it’s a commitment to excellence that goes beyond anything they’ve achieved on a football field. And it’s being done by people such as Christensen, Williams and McElroy on their own, free of charge, without any involvement by the Raider organization.

This isn’t the kind of sports story that gets a lot of coverage. There’s no big victory here to write about, no stunning loss. There won’t be any headlines coming out of this weekend’s clinics, no tales of shocking off-the-field behavior to cause people to shake their heads at the sad state of athletics.

As a matter of fact, if this weekend achieves its purpose, there could be fewer of those stories altogether.

Steve Springer