"Playing" It Forward : Jose Vargas
Jose Vargas has been a valued member of the Elite maintenance crew for more than four years. At the JCC, he does everything from setting up rooms for programs to disassembling the sukkah in which you celebrated with friends to making needed repairs on all 14 stories of our building. If you’ve encountered him anywhere in the building, chances are he’s shared a smile or kind word with you.
But his contributions go far beyond the walls of the JCC—most notably to the Washington Heights neighborhood where he grew up and still lives today.
For the past two summers, he and two lifelong friends, Jason Romer and Coleman Cooper, have brought together neighborhood boys and girls on weekend mornings to exercise and practice basketball drills at Sunken Playground on West 166th Street. The playground is the same one where the three played as children.
The sessions began informally, when the men started engaging friends’ sons in exercises and basketball drills in the park. Other kids joined them, and via word of mouth, the numbers grew. In 2017, 12 to 15 kids participated—last year there were close to 30. While most participants are between 9 and 12, Vargas says, “any kid is welcome.”
The program, known as United Streets of New York, also the name of Romer’s clothing line, is more than recreation—for the men who run it, it’s a way of giving back. When they were growing up, “a man in our neighborhood named Dave Crenshaw used to run a program in a gym, and all the kids were invited to play basketball. Before anybody played, we had to do exercises. That’s where we got the idea. We wanted to continue what he started,” Vargas explains.
Having deep roots in the neighborhood has made it easy to continue the tradition. “All the kids know us,” he says. “They know we’re from the neighborhood; they know us by name.” Then there’s the fact that “it’s the summer. Kids want to come out to the park and play basketball.”
Working with kids is nothing new to Vargas. Prior to Elite, he had a job in a school with children with developmental and emotional needs; he also worked in an afterschool program. “I’ve always been involved with kids,” he says. “I enjoy being with them.”
Today, Crenshaw still runs a gym, but it’s too far for the three men to bring up to 30 kids by themselves. With no regular indoor location, rainy weekends, of which there were five or six last summer, are literally a washout. “A school in the neighborhood lent us space one weekend, but that was only once,” Vargas says.
Perhaps the most rewarding part of the program comes at its conclusion. The kids are invited to a special event at the playground, where they enjoy a barbecue and participate in challenges for which they are awarded trophies. They’re also given a backpack full of school supplies, which Vargas, Cooper, and Romer have collected to help them start their school year off right. The idea for the culminating program came from a parent, who asked if the men were doing anything for back to school. It seemed like a great idea.
“If my daughter needs something,” says Vargas, father of 16-year-old Kayla, “I can get it. But there are people with five or six kids—if they only have to buy for two or three, that makes a difference.
“The first year [gathering the school supplies] it was just us; we didn’t know how to go about collecting things. I went to Judy Gross [director of literacy and math programs at the JCC], who ran the backpack donation program at the JCC in past years, and she told me to just go to the stores and ask.
“This year, it grew. We began a GoFundMe campaign, but we got a late start and raised maybe $1,200. Next year we’ll begin earlier.”
The program has also garnered attention from the local police precinct and Senator Robert Jackson, who have offered their support. Having the police behind them may open doors, literally, for indoor spaces in bad weather, as well as for a bigger end-of-summer event, which they want to open to entire families and offer additional attractions.
For the kids, though, this program is about more than exercise and basketball. “It’s a fun experience for them, and they become involved in the community and see how others are too,” Vargas says. And with their new backpacks full of supplies, they’re able to begin the school year prepared.
The payoff for Vargas, Cooper, and Romer is huge as well. “Just to see the kids’ faces, to see the pride they take in their trophies,” says Vargas, “that gives us joy.”
Sherri Lerner is the former editorial director at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan. She has written and edited for numerous publications and is currently on the staff of the Wechsler Center.