Partnerships With Yale

“The kids are there for each other,” Dawson explained to me, recently. “You know, as adults, we often hate to do this. If I give credit to you, that means I am not getting credit. Here they learn: We can love and support one another.” The goal was for them to form a bond that transcended race, class, and age. On some level, the practicing and the racing were just a pretext, and even the coaches were ultimately superfluous. “In the end,” he told me, “Their network will be more important than us.”

A few weeks later, during one of his very first races, Sebastian fell hard on the track and was almost trampled by a pack of runners. He limped back to the sidelines, tears streaming down his face. Dawson let him be. Then one of the older kids walked over to Sebastian, placed a hand on his shoulder, and told him: “Don’t worry about it, Sebastian. The same thing happened to me when I was starting out.”

As a coach, Dawson is constantly pushing his runners. “You never want a kid to feel like they’ve arrived,” he told me. And he doesn’t hesitate to put parents in their place. During races, when I was inclined to cheer loudly, Dawson said to me—politely, but firmly—“You’re going to let me coach my athlete, right?” He’d stand by the side of the track, and every time Sebastian sped past, Dawson would call to him softly: “Wait for it Sebastian—not yet!” Then, on the final lap, he’d holler, “Now—go now, Sebastian! Now!” And my son would go. He would heed the call with a look of pure determination on his face. During those moments, there was a bond between Dawson and my son—a special sort of trust and respect—that I knew I might never quite have.

It was the same for all of the runners in the club. They wanted to live up to the standards of Dawson and the other coaches. On one of the team’s “Report Card Nights,” I overheard Dawson talking to a kid whose grades had dropped. “Listen to me,” Dawson told the boy. “You are a fast runner and a good kid. But right now I’m here to tell you that, in a few months, we’re going to be right back here—in this room—looking at your next report card. And we will hold you accountable. We expect better. Now what can we do to make that happen?”

The boy’s grades improved.

As the months passed, and I got to know the coaches and parents better, it became apparent that the team’s biggest limitation was the lack of a proper place to train. In good weather, they ran outside; but in the winter, there was no indoor track available on a regular basis. “Trying to run them in the streets, at night, is not a good thing,” said Major Ruth, the club’s president, who has been tirelessly coaching the team for 16 years. They needed a better facility for the middle and long-distance runners so the kids could take their running “to another level.” At one point, I suggested that perhaps the kids could run at Coxe Cage, the gorgeous indoor track next to the Yale Bowl. “That’d be amazing,” said a coach. But no one seemed to think it was possible. One longtime track mom smiled rather sadly and told me: “Yale will never let us in.” I didn’t reply, in part because I thought she might be right.

Dawson shared this skepticism. He had grown up in the apartments across the street from New Haven’s Union Station, in what he describes as the city’s most “infamous inner-city project.” From here, he and his grandparents, who raised him, witnessed the daily comings and goings of Yale’s students. He recalls his grandmother saying, “Look at these people walking around the way they do—not even looking when they cross the street—like they own the place.” For him, Yale was a separate world. He rarely ventured near campus and never stepped inside a Yale building. He was a strong student but didn’t even consider applying to Yale. “It seems ridiculous now,” he told me, “but as a kid, I did not even know Yale was a place where people from New Haven could go.” Many of the kids in the club, Dawson said, felt no connection to Yale. “Yale is one of the most prestigious places in the world, but the kids don’t take any pride in it—their parents don’t either—and that is a shame.”

His remarks depressed me. I’d been a rower at Yale, and I had participated in several outreach programs in which varsity athletes brought New Haven kids onto campus. I also knew that outreach was a priority for Tom Beckett, then Yale’s athletic director. On a whim, I e-mailed Beckett in the fall of 2016 and asked about Coxe Cage. He responded positively: it was possible. The challenge was finding a time that didn’t conflict with Yale’s team schedules. It took several weeks to work out the logistics, but then we had it: on Wednesday nights, from 6:30 to 8:00, the track was ours. Beckett and his coaches came through.

On our first night, as the kids walked into Coxe Cage, staring at its size and the pristine condition of the track, a hush came over them. They had been running down narrow school hallways for years. It seemed none of them could quite believe that this space was really theirs.

Throughout the winter, the team’s distance runners—kids from every neighborhood in New Haven—raced along the banked track of Coxe Cage. With time, they grew more comfortable and confident. And steadily, they got faster. In the fall, they traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, to compete in the AAU National Championship. They won first place in the 13-to-14 age group.

In 2018, Tom Beckett retired. His successor, Vicky Chun, welcomed the team back to Coxe Cage. A tradition had begun. By now, when the kids arrived, they sauntered in—like they belonged. On one occasion, I saw a few of the newer members gawking at their surroundings. But in his characteristic no-nonsense fashion, Dawson didn’t let them ogle for long.

“Let’s get going,” he told the kids.