About the Players

The program will focus on those students who demonstrate “college potential” and commitment to their academic progress and the CIR program. The program is not intended to help lower-achieving students maintain minimum high school athletic participation academic standards (2.0 G.P.A.) or to be a remedial tutoring program.

It is important to the long-term success of the program that particular attention is paid to freshmen and sophomore students’ attendance and academic performance to get them on the right track and keep them there. There is a trend for many students’ academic performance and commitment to diminish toward the end of their sophomore and into their junior years due to peer pressure to not achieve, economic pressures to work, boy-girl relationships and an attitudinal shift toward apathy. This is a common evolution with teenagers at many high schools, but is particularly pronounced at Richmond High School.

The focus on college opportunities, materials and exposure will intensify once the CIR students start their junior years. If the students can maintain close to 100% attendance and solid academic performance through their junior years the odds of them attending college increase exponentially.

Once the college-eligible students become seniors, which in any one year may be 2-7 students initially and hopefully 10-15 after a few years, individual attention from mentors and access to outside resources will increase and in some cases may become one to one mentoring and special “senior sessions” will be held during the fall. Qualified, special guidance and resources will be provided for college testing preparation, awareness of the appropriate college opportunities, the college application process, and college tours.