City Lax
The principals at Connect The Kids have been working with elementary schools in the Denver Public School System for over ten years to bring development and enrichment programs to disadvantaged youth. Over the last decade, Erik Myhren and Herman White have worked tirelessly to build relationships with students, parents, educators and administrators within DPS. Their early efforts were entirely self-funded and involved creating opportunities for inner-city kids to have fun and experience new things. Activities included ski trips to Vail, white water rafting in the mountains and trips to Colorado Rockies games.
As the years progressed, the Connect The Kids team expanded the number of events conducted each year and increased the number of kids that they reached. They also secured some outside funding from individual supporters and organizations such as The Denver Foundation. Despite this increased funding, however, the team was still constrained by both financial and time limitations due to the fact that each of them worked 40+ hour jobs in addition to their work in the youth development arena. They simply could not reach as many kids with as many enrichment opportunities as the community needed.
All this began to change when Erik Myhren and Rod Allison co-founded a new organization in 2007 called Denver City Lax. The program got started when Erik Myhren, a long time teacher at Hallett Elementary School, introduced a handful of his 5th grade students to some old lacrosse sticks and balls. The primarily minority students from the Denver inner city took to the sport like no one ever could have imagined. Soon City Lax had a group of 40 young boys and girls coached by a team of former high school and college lacrosse players, (including George Moore,the first black lacrosse player at the United States Naval Academy) fully engaged in the sport of lacrosse: Denver City Lax was born.
The goal of City Lax is to give disadvantaged Denver kids the opportunity to engage in a new, positive activity to promote self-esteem and to help develop a work ethic that can enhance educational aspirations. The idea was to employ lacrosse as a kind of catalyst to help these kids break from the all too common cycle of drugs, gangs, violence and ultimately imprisonment or premature death.
From 2008-2010, City Lax really took off. The program now serves over 100 participants and involves dozens of coaches and other supporters. The original group of City Lax kids is now entering high school. Thanks to the awareness and visibility of this program, a number of students (including brother and sister Jaden and Joanne Franklin and Trevon Hamlet) have been accepted as scholarship students at private local high schools such as Kent Denver and Mullen.
City Lax has been a resounding success—and one that is now being replicated in other cities around the United States. It was also the subject of an award-winning documentary film “City Lax: An Urban Lacrosse Story.” The key to the success of City Lax comes down to three factors; the same factors that now form the basis of the Connect The Kids business plan. Erik and the City Lax team made kids aware of an exciting, new opportunity. They then provided access to program (transportation to practice, games and tournaments) and covered/subsidized the cost of equipment and fees to participate. The success of the City Lax program made the Connect The Kids team realize that there was a much bigger opportunity out there. An opportunity to take the key components that made City Lax work (awareness, transportation and cost mitigation) and apply them across a much broader array of enrichment programs, including those focused in areas such as art, dance, music, theater, writing, academics and, of course, sports.