Team Wesley and Southside Youth - Innovations for Youth
InterServ’s Southside Youth Center provides a safe and fun environment to encourage positive activities and friendships among elementary, junior high, and high school students and to improve school success by decreasing absenteeism, truancy and in school and out of school suspensions. Entrance to the Youth Center is tied to school attendance. The Youth Center director monitors daily school attendance records for all students attending the program. Students who are absent, truant, or involved in in-school or out-of-school suspension are not eligible to participate in youth activities that day. Students are motivated to change negative school habits by the desire to participate in activities and spend time with their friends.
Our greatest innovation, however, has been the development of our Olympic Weightlifting program. Over the last 25 years, InterServ has worked to build a successful weightlifting program that has earned us the self-proclaimed title of the Weightlifting Capital of America. Certainly, InterServ’s weightlifting program has become an influential force in the USA weightlifting community and most importantly, in the lives of the youth who train at the Southside Youth Center. InterServ’s weightlifting program serves youth between the ages of 10 and 19. The program allows participants to take weightlifting classes or become a member of the competitive Wesley Weightlifting Team (members of the Wesley Weightlifters must maintain a 2.5 GPA to travel and compete). The competitive team travels to meets across the globe, giving many low-income youth an opportunity to have experiences that they would never have apart from the program. The program also gets parents involved. Each week, the Youth Center has a Friday night dance for 3rd to 6th grade students that is organized and chaperoned by Wesley Weightlifting Parents as a fundraiser to cover travel and competition expenses for the Team.
Our weightlifting program is open to students of all athletic abilities and encourages youth to set goals, build character and self-discipline, and to believe in themselves. Katie, a 12-year-old Autistic weightlifter, is a perfect example of the program’s success. Since she began weightlifting approximately 1 ½ years ago, Katie has moved from lifting a broomstick handle to the weightlifting bar with light weights. More importantly, her mom says her involvement in weightlifting has increased her self-confidence and helped her to try new things at school.
Our youth programs are seeing positive result. Although 85% of our youth come from low to moderate income and single parent families, their accomplishments speak loud and clear about the impact of our programs. The combined GPA for the Wesley Weightlifters (135 students) is 3.1. More than 100 failing grades were improved to a C+ or better during the 2004-05 school year and detentions were reduced by 65%. Our weightlifting program boast 106 National weightlifting team championships including the 2004 American Open, the 2005 Senior National Team Championship, the 2005 Schoolage National Team Championship, and Wesley holds the 12-17 Boys and Girls 1st place title for 9 years and counting. Since its inception, InterServ’s weightlifting program has had more than 15 student athletes earn full college scholarships to resident training program in Colorado Springs. Although the focus of the program is directed at building character, 5 of our lifters are currently on target to compete in the 2012 Olympic Games, including the 1st female weightlifter from St. Joseph. Then again, coaching weightlifters to the Olympics is nothing new for InterServ, 2 former Wesley Weightlifter, Wes Barnett and Pete Kelley, know the excitement of Olympic Competition, as does our Youth Center director, Dennis Snethen, who was a USA Olympic Weightlifting Coach at the 1996 games.
Visit the official USA Weightlifting (USAW) website.