Three young men stood head and shoulders above the sea of youths playing basketball at Southgate Community Center’s courts on Saturday afternoon.
"Personally, this program raised me," said 25-year-old Shervin Shakibai, who grew up in the Southgate neighborhood of Reston and joined the Reston Youth Club’s (RYC) summer basketball league when he was 12 years old. "My parents were always working, and this program kept me out of trouble," he said.
Shakibai began working for RYC when he was 16 and continued to do so throughout his years at South Lakes High School. He then attended George Mason University for five years, but came back to help with the program every year. "The program did so much for me so I felt I needed to give back," said Shakibai. "I needed to give back and do my part to make sure it doesn’t end." Shakibai and some of his friends plan to keep the basketball program running for RYC once the executive director since its inception in 1982, Bob Dim, retires from it.
"This is the first place I really played basketball," said 18-year-old T.J. Montague. He started playing in the RYC summer league when he was 7 years old, following in the footsteps of his friends already playing in the summer league. "It all started from here," said Montague about his athletic abilities. In two weeks, he will be putting on a helmet and pads as he goes through his first college preseason as a football player at Bridgewater College.
Ashraful Azim, 26, began playing basketball with the RYC program when he was 10 years old. He and his parents moved to the neighborhood from Bangladesh, and he found friends on the basketball court where he learned the basics and the rules of the game. He worked his way through Wendell Byrd’s South Lakes High School basketball program and made the varsity team in 1999, his senior year and the year the Seahawks lost in the state final. "I wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for this [the RYC] program," he said. His passion for basketball grew and now he returns each summer to help Dim run the summer league, taking opportunities to do some coaching and give back to the program what he took. "It’s about fundamentals and basics and just having a good time," said Azim.
RYC CELEBRATED the end to its 26th summer league season on Saturday, July 28, with an annual All-Star picnic for the players and their parents. Dim said the program started in 1982 with 75 children from the Southgate neighborhood. He worked in the recreation services for Fairfax County and listened to the children in the neighborhood who said they wanted more organized sports. Dim and others took an active role to take down some of the tennis courts at Southgate and make them into basketball courts. They then went into the neighborhoods and targeted children considered to be more at-risk than others. "It [the program] is open to everybody," said Dim. "Nobody’s denied, but we were looking especially for kids who maybe come from disadvantaged backgrounds. It is harder for those kids to register for stuff."
This year the program registered more than 500 children, ages 5 through 18. Although the participants pay a registration fee, $85, Dim said about 25 percent of them are on some sort of subsidy. This year RYC, a non-profit organization, started its basketball program $4,000 short. "We need sponsors," said Dim.
The 26th year for the program faced more than financial challenges, according to Dim. "This was an important year for us. This summer was a little challenging for a lot of reasons," he said. The program had to leave what was then Southgate Community Room when Fairfax County decided it would rebuild the facility into Southgate Community Center. For three years RYC used facilities at South Lakes High School for the basketball program. Prior to the renovations, Dim said RYC also ran a bike shop where old bikes were donated and the participants could fix them up earning themselves a bicycle. It also had a car wash and a reading program. For the last five years RYC has only run its summer basketball program. Dim said he works full time as a Fairfax County teacher at Herndon Middle School and needed to scale the program down. "I did this for 20 years year-round," he said. He would like to see someone take over for him and said he would help the young men who grew up with the program to do so if they expressed interest in it, as Shakibai stated they would. "If they want to pick it up, I’ll help them start it," said Dim. "All those guys grew up around here. This is their community and they feel the need" for those programs. Dim added he would be back in charge of the summer basketball league next year.
The area did not experience much activity during the three years of the renovation, and Dim said that there was an element of tension present during some of the program’s evening games. On a few occasions, although nothing happened, Dim felt a group of young men posed a threat to the league participants as he felt they could have been gang members. For the most part, he said, the police responded well by providing additional bike patrols in the area, but on one occasion a police officer told him he could hire private security, and that the police does not provide that sort of service. "Our whole thing is prevention," said Dim. Even though he experienced one unpleasant situation with that police officer, Dim said, "The police have been great and the [Southgate] Center’s been very supportive."