These Games Test the Mind, Not the Body : Academics: NAACP chapter hopes to send 21 youths to ‘Olympics of the Mind’ competition. But money is short this year.

When the other members of his band couldn’t make the audition, 18-year-old Trevor Ira Lawrence showed up anyway and performed solo--on drums.

For Lawrence, a graduating senior at Hamilton High School, the audition was just too good an opportunity to pass up. It was his key to going to the “Olympics of the Mind” next month in Nashville, Tenn.

Staged each year by the NAACP, the Olympics is a showcase for African-American youths that rewards brains and talent with gold medals and college scholarships. This year, the Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics will be held July 9-14 during the 82nd Annual NAACP Convention.

Lawrence is one of 21 finalists the Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP hopes to send to Nashville for the national competition if the chapter can raise enough money, said James Jones, the chapter’s volunteer Olympics chairman.

“The recession has really cut into funding,” Jones said. “But we feel this talent should be showcased. We’ll get them there some way.”

The Olympics, established by the NAACP in 1977, offers high school students the opportunity to compete in 24 categories, including biology, math, physics, filmmaking and music, Jones said.

More than 200 applicants from 120 public, private and church schools throughout Los Angeles County took part in qualifying competitions.

Since the Beverly Hills/Hollywood chapter began sending contestants in 1978, Los Angeles competitors have consistently brought back honors in architecture, biology, dance, filmmaking, drama and poetry, Jones said.

This year, among the contestants the group wants to send is Glynnis Reed, 16, a student at Los Angeles High School for the Arts.

Reed, who hopes to attend the Otis Parsons School of Design, plans to enter one of her large-format acrylic paintings.

The chapter also plans to send Paul Henry, 17, a student at King-Drew Medical Center Health Professions High School. The 11th-grader will enter a biology experiment he designed to determine whether red and white blood cell counts change with age. He has his sights set on attending Morehouse College in Atlanta.

After performing the title role in Shakespeare’s “Othello” at the convention last year in Houston, Eric Jones hopes to return to the competition to perform an original piece he wrote. Jones, 17, a student at Crenshaw High, said he discovered dramatics more or less by accident last year when he enrolled in a class because the art class he wanted had no openings.

“This is new to me. I didn’t know I had any talent,” he said. It’s not that he believes he has any more talent than his friends from his neighborhood, but he’s been lucky.

In the fifth grade, kids from the neighborhood start getting into gangs, Jones said. He’s always used drawing and painting to express himself and his feelings, but he said his friends have no way of finding out their talents.

“We need more things like the Olympics,” he said. “It’s bound to spark somebody’s interest. We need to have an outlet for them.”

Going to the NAACP Olympics is a high for everybody, Jones said. “But you can’t get a big head, because everybody there is just as good as you.”

But despite the finalists’ talent and drive, the chapter is having a difficult time raising money for this year’s trip, Jones said.

“The recession may be one of the reasons,” he said. “We hope people will be concerned. We’re saying don’t leave us out. We know there are people out there who care.”