“Get Right Back Up”: Celebrating Strong Girls at DC SCORES

“Sports are not just for boys,” says La’Dae, a poet-athlete at Stanton Elementary School. 

The third grader is reflecting on the afterschool DC SCORES practices where she and her teammates hone their soccer skills, write poetry, and design service-learning projects for their community. 

La’Dae is one of more than 3,500 poet-athletes who participate in the nonprofit’s award-winning afterschool programs, which empower young people to lead healthy lives, be engaged students, and have the confidence to make a difference in the world.

For La’Dae, the program has also become a vital space to process grief and celebrate the people in her life dedicated to helping her achieve her ambitions. 

“It’s About Working With Your Team”

La’Dae says her favorite thing about DC SCORES is having fun with her friends, but emphasizes that “It’s not just about fun. It’s about working with your team.”

“It’s really boosting up their confidence,” says Ashley Jones, a DC SCORES writing coach at Stanton. The program has had a significant impact on her students. “I think they start out not knowing what to do and where they belong [but we see them] just glow and grow.”

During the fall season, Jones, who is also a computer teacher at Stanton, helped coach the team to a Spirit Award-winning performance at DC SCORES’ Eastside Poetry Slam, held in November at Howard University’s historic Cramton Auditorium. 

The Stanton Panthers impressed the DC SCORES judges with moving performances exploring their love for soccer, the power of art, and two solo poems — one of which was performed by La’Dae — about parental loss. 

Jones recognizes that the win “really showed that we just did our thing,” but stresses the most important part of the experience was the opportunity the slams gave for poet-athletes to share their emotions with a supportive audience. “It’s coming from you, and it’s your experience. It helped them to really portray the feelings,” she says.

Providing Emotional Care

Tapping into that emotional energy was particularly important for La’Dae, who lost her mom at two years old. “It was me and my friend that talked about our mothers that’s not here and what happened and how we stayed strong as those years went past,” says La’Dae of her slam performance.

She can recite her poem word for word to this day. “I miss my mom / I love her so much, her kisses, tickles, and her touch / I remember she used to play with me and my sister / But to this day, I really, really miss her,” goes part of the first verse. 

“The emotions. I was happy and feeling down because I think every day about how I see moms always with their kids and having joy, why my mom’s not here,” La’Dae says. The DC SCORES program has allowed her to celebrate her mom and process her feelings about losing her. 

The program also provides a space for stronger connections between poet-athletes and their teachers. Like most coaches in the program, Stanton’s DC SCORES coaches are daytime staff at the school. Jones says DC SCORES’ daily afterschool practices give her and her colleagues the chance to form deeper bonds with their students.

“I built personal relationships with my teammates,” she says of the poet-athletes in her care. 

“I’m so glad I took that opportunity because now maybe they see a mother figure in me, and so now, we can go further with the relationship.”

Since girls are less likely to participate in extracurricular sports, Jones takes extra time to connect with the girls in her program. “Having the girls know that there is an opportunity and that you can go out and do it, you don’t have to just stick to the cliche,” is powerful, she says.

“I’m a mother myself,” adds Jones. “It’s nice to have just a different softness that I can be with the girls. It helps me, too.”

Inspiring Women and Girls

Though La’Dae will always miss her mom, she says she is lucky to have numerous women in her life whose love and support she counts on every day. She names them: Jones and fellow DC SCORES Deanna Price, a former coach Jazzmyne Townsend, and Miss Collins, her third-grade teacher, who she says is “like an aunt to me.”

At the very top of the list is her grandma, who is raising La’Dae and her older sister. “She is a brave woman,” says La’Dae. “She’s a strong grandma, and she’s very supportive, so I love her.”

La’Dae says she channeled some of her grandma’s strength herself when she got up on the slam stage in November. “It’s a lot of brave kids on stage, and at first, I was very nervous, but as soon as it was our turn, I said, ‘I got this. I can do it,’” she recalls.

Talking about all the courageous women in her life in March, Women’s History Month, reminds La’Dae of Ruby Bridges, who made history at age six when she became the first Black child in the South to attend an all-white elementary school. “She went to an all-white school, and she still stood up for her civil rights!” La’Dae explains.

La’Dae believes there is a lesson to be learned from Ruby Bridges, her grandma, and all the brave women and girls in the Stanton community. “Even though girls fall or they lose, that doesn’t mean they should give up, they should keep trying,” she says. “Just know, for the girls, if you fall, you can get right back up.”