Growing up in Harlem, Antoine Noble says basketball was everything to him. He played through high school at the Frederick Douglass Academy and went on to receive a scholarship to play at Keuka College, which is about an hour southeast of Rochester, but a knee injury forced him to go into the business side of sports. As a basketball aficionado with a love of his community, he had an interest in youth development and giving back to kids.
After graduating from SUNY Delhi in 2012, he and his friends began organizing free tournaments for the kids in Harlem at Riverbank State Park. Providing an opportunity for kids to have a free and safe space to help them to stay away from trouble has been central to Noble’s work in his professional career and came out of a need he noticed in the community, compared to his upbringing.
“I wanted it to be available to beginners and people who have been playing, because most of the time, beginners shy away if the skill level was too high,” said Noble, 36.
In 2020, he and his three fellow board members developed We Got Next (WGX), a nonprofit providing youth in underserved areas of NYC a free and safe space to play sports and develop both life skills and academics. Noble serves as CEO. Although it was open to all kids ages 6–18, he said his team wanted to focus on the kids who never would have the opportunities to play otherwise.
“I wanted to really focus on those kids that never made teams and never had the opportunity to play organized sports, because there are so many kids that can make a basketball team,” Noble said. “I wanted to make sure that they still had somewhere to go as well, so that they didn’t just end up being in the streets or turned away.”
The program operates out of several schools and community centers, primarily serving students in the South Bronx and Harlem. Noble’s group also made sure the program would be completely free because basketball tournaments and other after-school programs often require parents to pay.
“For these five years that we’ve been in business, no kid has had to pay for anything, and that’s really unheard of when it comes to sports in New York these days, but we have kept everything free,” Noble said. Kids also receive lunch during the Saturday sessions hosted by the nonprofit.
The program focuses on three “M’s”: mindfulness, in which they take kids through meditation before a basketball session; movement through the sports helping them build teamwork and camaraderie; and matriculation, in which they focus on encouraging academic performance. Students can participate in clinics and also try out to join the official WGX Boys and Girls teams.
In 2022, the She Got Next initiative came out of WGX. It allowed more young girls to become involved in the program. Beginning that year, girls’ teams formed for the first time.
“Our girl clinics for She Got Next were averaging about 20 to 30 girls on a nightly [basis] and we had girls coming all the way to the Bronx from Brooklyn to participate in this, because there weren’t too many opportunities out there for them to do these kinds of things,” Noble said.
“For us, just seeing some of those girls still come in the program and they’re in high school now, it’s a testament to them wanting a safe place to be and to continue playing, and even some of them that didn’t want to continue to play, they come and they help out,” he continued.
In 2021, WGX began expanding to other sports and activities, including flag football, kickball, soccer, and dance and step classes. Beyond sports, other programs focus on academic enrichment, in which speakers and volunteers teach courses on STEM and other fields. They also have a barber and cosmetology mentoring program. In the summer, students in WGX can participate in the program with the opportunity to travel and take part in tournaments. The boys’ team reached the USA Basketball Open in Indiana in 2022, placing fourth.
Today, WGX serves up to 120 kids and partners with schools in the Bronx and Harlem such as New Design Middle School and Accion Academy, and community centers like the Sonia Sotomayor Center, to deliver the programming after school and on Saturdays. They serve as contractors for the spaces, but are looking to expand in the New York Department of Youth and Development and become their own after-school program.
Noble now works with WGX full-time and is actively working to build more partnerships with Department of Education schools, charter schools, and sponsors, and raise funds through donations and grants. In the past, they’ve received awards from companies such as Dick’s Sporting Goods and Whole Foods. They are looking to raise $100,000 to invest in the organization, including paying for programs, food, and equipment for students, as well as paying coaches and staff.
Noble said they are looking to “stay the course” to continue to build out WGX.
To find more information about WGX or to give support, visit their website.
Like this:
Like Loading…
Related