ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 27, 1996 TAG: 9604290011
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: ELLISTON
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE STAFF WRITER
Shawn Hathoway, a seventh-grader at Shawsville High and Middle School, spends every Wednesday afternoon in an exclusively cool club. And his friends are jealous.
"Some of them didn't want to join. They thought it was stupid until we went swimming, then everyone wanted to be in it," he said.
Hathoway is one of about 40 kids from the Shawsville and Elliston area in COOL, or the Campus Outreach Opportunities League.
The project, organized by Virginia Tech doctoral students Don McCrumb and Starla McCullum, brings physical education majors at Tech together with at-risk children from fourth through eighth grade.
Counselors and teachers at Shawsville and Elliston-Lafayette Elementary schools, along with the middle school, select pupils they think could benefit from COOL.
Some of these kids don't have any other type of club or sport to call their own, said seventh-grade teacher Ellen Oliver.
"The 'belonging thing' has been really important," she said. "Every Wednesday they get really psyched because they know they're coming out here."
The Virginia Tech students, who receive one credit for their semester-long involvement, plan activities for the kids. Recently, Waverly Jackson headed up the in-line skating day on the tennis courts at Elliston-Lafayette.
The more experienced skaters pelted tennis balls toward the goal in an intense roller-hockey game; other, less-experienced bladers wobbled around the outside, clinging to a teacher, each other, or the closest steady object they could find.
Fifth-grader Marlin Taylor said he comes every week.
"It gives you something to do - you stay out of trouble," he said, whizzing a tennis ball past a goalie with his hockey stick.
So far this year, the students have played basketball, learned karate, gymnastics and swimming.
Much of the equipment, like the skates from Blue Ridge Outdoors, were donated. Funding for the program comes from a private organization that's given grants to seven locations across the state. Montgomery County school buses ship children to wherever the weekly activity goes on; parents pick the kids up by about 4:30 p.m.
The dozen or so Tech students say they've gained valuable teaching experience.
Kiki Robinson (who, according to fifth-grader Crystal Brown is "the coolest") said she's having a great time - especially because she knows what a difference the program is making.
"Some of them will come up and ask me 'What's college like? Are classes fun?'"
McCullum hopes to gather data on grades and attendance records to see what kind of effect the program is making. For now, she has her students interview the kids.
"I ask them if they'll ever consider going to college as a result of this," said Robinson, "and they say 'Oh, yeah, definitely.'"
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff. Virginia Tech student Kiki Robinsonby CNB(center) gets help from seventh-grader Krystal Brown (left) and
fifth-grader Marlin Taylor during a COOL program activity at
Elliston-Lafayette school. color.