Will Taschler

Will Taschler (he/him) is an eighth grade student at the LREI school. He was born in Manhattan, New York, and lives there currently. He is interested in the topic of equity and access in youth sports. He is interested in this topic because he is an athlete and knows the benefits of equity and accessibility.

Interview with Jonathan Gamberg

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We had an in person interview with Jonathan Gamberg who is the associate director of the City Parks Foundation. He mostly works in Queens and Brooklyn but spends time in the other three boroughs as well. He is one of three full time workers at the City Parks Foundation.

He first talked about how the organization has sporting events around the city throughout the year. These events are for kids ages 6-18 to provide them with sports that are free to play. These events are mostly instructed by the 120 part-timers that they hire every year. Jonathan explained how he tends to hire students in high school/college that are interested in sports because it is a good opportunity for them. Those high school and college students teacher the 60 percentile of the people they hire the other 50-40 are older people. Gamberg told us how he does partnerships with professional sports teams in the city. He originally wanted to work for a professional team but when he got this job at a younger age, he fell in love with it. He says he loves providing kids with free to play, good quality sports.

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Interview with LREI gym teacher and volleyball coach: Luis Hernandez.

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On Tuesday, January 24th, 2023, my group and I interviewed Luis Hernandez. Luis works at LREI and coaches for a girls volleyball team in the middle school and high school. He is also the 7th and 8th grade P.E teacher. He grew up in the city playing different kinds of sports like volleyball, basketball, and more. He is also a coach outside of school for a girls basketball team called the city.

We interviewed him because played sports as a kid in the city. Luis had a strong opinion on the idea that the girls will stay on a team until they are 18, but the boys will try to leave and join a better team when they are 11-14. He is passionate about this opinion because this exact situation happened to him when he coached the city. That is why there is only one boys team left and the rest in girls. This is really disappointing because the boys team would have a lot of potential considering they won nationals two years in a row in the early 2010’s and produced a few NBA players.

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Interview with LREI teacher and varsity head coach: Chris Klein

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On Monday, January 23rd, 2023, my group interviewed with Chris Klein who is an LREI math teacher and varsity head coach. We reached out to him because he grew up playing many sports and is also a coach. He played multiple sports up until high school, but started to focus on basketball more.

We asked Chris his opinions about the inequalities with youth sports. He stated that sports are so important to kids because of the health benefits. He explained how it was so good for your health. Another positive he said that sports bring are friendships. He said that he worked in this summer basketball program and he noticed so many bonds being made and that made him happy. This explains how much sports can give to a person and for some people not being to access it is unfair. Chris says that he thinks there should be more non-profit, easy to access organizations for people of lower income.

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Interview with Coach Macky: Owner of Steady Buckets

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On the 19th of January 2023, my group had the opportunity to meet with the founder and owner of Steady Buckets, a non-profit basketball organization located in Manhattan, New York. Throughout Coach Macky’s childhood, he always loved sports. Later on, he started experimenting with coaching. He realized he really liked it and wanted to take one step further. He thought that there should’ve been an easy to access, good quality basketball training program. That is why he founded Steady Buckets in 2010.

They started out well, reaching about 50 kids, but that was just the start. For years the number just kept doubling and doubling until they had a maximum capacity. They kept evolving during the years. When COVID-19 hit in the early 2020’s, Steady Buckets gained extreme popularity with its online classes. It was running throughout the day making it very accessible. He said that doing these online workouts helped gain them popularity even when the online era was over, he noticed a lot of new faces that he saw from zoom, in the facility, which made him very happy.

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