Tulley Brown, 72; Founded Sports Program to Aid At-Risk Youths

Tulley Brown, founder of Direction Sports, a groundbreaking program for disadvantaged youths that used their interest in sports to challenge them in math and other academic subjects, has died. He was 72.

Brown, who had been in failing health for some time, died Nov. 13 of heart failure at his home in La Crescenta.

Started by Brown in Los Angeles in 1968, Direction Sports was an after-school program for elementary and junior high school students in which teams studied before practice on school days and competed academically during games on weekends. College students provided the tutoring and coaching for low fees and often for free.

The program was considered a model, and was very successful by the mid-1970s.

In one yearlong study by a UCLA professor, youngsters who went through the academic training offered by Direction Sports showed a marked improvement in test scores over similar students who did not have the tutoring.

The program gained the support of a wide range of public figures, including coaches John Wooden of UCLA and John McKay of USC as well as Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and Gov. Pete Wilson. The program expanded to other cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Indianapolis, New York and Phoenix.

But funding, which had always been problematic as it relied on private contributions and some government grants, dried up during the Reagan administration in the 1980s, and Direction Sports had to scale back its mission.

By the mid-1990s, the program had been disbanded in Los Angeles, a victim of short funds and Brown’s need to attend to his wife, Jackie, who died of cancer in 1997.

Born April 20, 1932, in Los Angeles, Brown graduated from Los Angeles High School, where he competed in track and earned three letters in basketball. He also represented his school in speech contests.

He earned a political science degree at Occidental College, where he continued his athletic career, lettering in basketball and participating in track. After college, he served in the Army for two years, then traveled extensively in Central and South America and did some youth missionary work in Hong Kong.

Throughout his college years, he was active in the Wilshire Methodist Church, where he served as youth director. He also participated in outreach programs for disadvantaged youths.

During the early 1960s, he worked in sales and management for Great Books of the Western World. By 1967, however, he had given up his business career to work with emotionally disturbed children at the Kennedy Child Study Center in Santa Monica.

While doing that, he began raising money and building a library collection for a halfway house for youths facing legal problems.

It was while working on that project that he conceived the idea of Direction Sports.

The program drew literally hundreds of at-risk young people from various parts of the city who had been in trouble with the law.

In the after-school sessions, the youths practiced whatever sport was in season and listened to “chalk talks” that tutored them in reading and math, with an emphasis on sports.

In basketball season, for example, a boy would be asked to spell such words as “back court,” “field goal,” “baseline” and “rebound.” Or he would be asked to solve a math problem such as: “If a team has 35 points at the half and has scored 11 field goals and 3 free throws since then, how many points does it have now?”

On Saturdays, a team from one neighborhood played against a team from another neighborhood. But the winner was not always decided by mere athletic prowess. During the game, a referee might ask the boy who had just scored a basket to spell one of the words that had been reviewed during the week’s lessons. The answer would determine whether the basket counted.

“We try to show youngsters that they have to be able to score points with their minds,” Brown told the Washington Post some years ago. “We want them to know that learning can be just as exciting as sports. We use the team as the hub and take the strength that comes from [the] team unit to develop a kid’s sense of power, to show how he can build goals and achieve them.”

Robert Garrett, the football coach at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles, participated in Direction Sports as a youngster.

“Without Direction Sports, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now,” Garrett told The Times on Tuesday.

“It gave me my first opportunity in our neighborhood to belong to a positive program. It was a way out, to improve, to be something prominent, to excel in life.”

Brown is survived by twin daughters Kimberly Kane of Milwaukee and Kathleen Elsig of Zurich, Switzerland; another daughter, Shannon Noel of Seattle; a son, Tulley Brown III of Spokane, Wash.; and eight grandchildren.

Funeral services will be held at 9:30 a.m. today at the Little Church of the Flowers at Forest Lawn, Glendale.