April 14, 2014
By Misa Sugiura
In September of 2000, Brenda Villa and her Stanford women's water polo teammates folded themselves into child-size chairs in the library of East Palo Alto Charter School. The team was volunteering in a tutoring program at the school, which serves a low-income, mostly Latino community just east of Stanford University.
With her quick smile and fluent Spanish, Villa connected easily with her students. But as the weeks passed she discovered a glaring difference between herself and these children. They were missing out on an experience that Villa had taken for granted as a child--an experience that had changed her life.
An Unlikely Beginning
Villa's parents, both Mexican immigrants, raised their family in the largely Hispanic working class city of Commerce, southeast of Los Angeles. Brenda's mother Rosario--who could not swim and worried about her children's safety in the water--enrolled Brenda and her two brothers in swimming lessons at the city pool.
The rest is history.
At age eight, Villa started playing water polo; at 15 she won her first Junior World Championship medal; at 20 she represented the United States in the 2000 Olympic debut of women's water polo and won her first Olympic medal; she retired in 2012 with four Olympic medals to her name.
At the heart of Villa's story are not just her boundless talent, drive, and trademark positive attitude, but also her unlikely roots. Her hometown doesn't resemble a breeding ground for elite water polo players. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Commerce's median household income is $51,022, and 14.2 percent of households live below the poverty line. Nearly 95 percent of its residents identify as Hispanic.
But the city of Commerce has what Villa calls "a secret weapon": it subsidizes youth sports. Every sports program is free of charge for the children of Commerce residents.
Why not?
"Growing up, I never realized how lucky I was," Villa says. "I just thought, This is normal." At East Palo Alto Charter School, she had an epiphany. "I thought, This is kind of like the neighborhood [I grew up in], and they don't have what I had. Why not? It made me open my eyes."
She began asking around: Why not? The answer: money. Beyond building costs, pools need pumps, filters, heaters, chemicals, lights, locker rooms, drowning insurance, lifeguards, and maintenance staff. Pools are expensive; aquatic programs are expensive.
"That's why water polo isn't as diverse as it should be," Villa points out, "And it's like, `OK, how can we change that?'" One day, she decided, she would find a way.
In the spring of 2008, the same year Villa would win her third Olympic medal, 14-year-old Skylar Dorosin played for Stanford Water Polo Club at a tournament in Commerce. Upon learning about the city program and its connection to Villa, Dorosin thought of her hometown's low-income neighbor, East Palo Alto. She began asking Villa's question: Why not?
By the summer of 2009, Dorosin had set up a series of free local swim clinics for low-income youth from East Palo Alto and similar communities. Villa, who had deferred her plans for a Commerce-like program to focus on her career, got wind of Dorosin's summer clinics and got involved in 2010. Together they worked on expanding and formalizing the program. They set a goal to have a girl on track to play at the collegiate or national level by the year 2020.
Project 2020 now had a name.
After retiring from competition in 2012, Villa began growing Project 2020 into a yearlong program. East Palo Alto does not have a public pool, so she turned to the nearby Belle Haven neighborhood of Menlo Park, Calif., which has similar demographics and a public pool.
Making It Happen
The reality of Belle Haven does not match its idyllic moniker. Look at the worn-down 1940's bungalows and the kids playing soccer on the concrete court of a dingy apartment building, and you'd never guess that hundreds of Silicon Valley millionaires share the same zip code--or perhaps more poignant, that Facebook calls this neighborhood home. The prosperity of the tech boom seems to have forgotten this part of town.
In April 2013, Villa held presentations at local schools and at the Belle Haven community pool to recruit girls for the program. Her efforts produced a crop of females unfamiliar with water polo but eager to follow an Olympic medalist from a similar background.
On a chilly February evening less than a year later, 26 girls between the ages of nine and 14 practice passing, shooting, and shot blocking at the pool. Villa walks the deck, issuing a constant stream of admonitions and encouragement.
"Valeria, instead of going with your left, can you move your body and your arm to try and catch it with your right?"
"Miss Montse! How do you catch? You go to the ball. Arms up--get off the ball!"
"You, too, Mariela! Let's go! Arms up!"
She stops for a moment to point across the pool. When practices began in May 2013, she says her charges "all started in the shallow end. They were almost afraid of the deep water."
She smiles, then springs back to the present. "Oh, nice shot! OK, Alexia, get ready for the next one."
Changing Lives
Numerous studies show that participation in organized sports boosts fitness, grades, self-confidence, and engagement in school. But a 2006 study conducted by the Harvard Family Research Project showed that only 36% of low-income youth participate in organized sports, citing cost as a major factor. Villa's mission to offer a low-cost aquatic program to this population makes perfect sense.
The experience of the girls in Villa's program supports the research. Azucena Sandoval says of her nine-year-old daughter, "She's more active, her grades are higher, she's more confident. She is very strong." She continues, "When [she] started, she didn't even really know how to swim, and now she's thinking about the future, to keep going and playing in high school."
College is coming into the picture, too. Villa tells the story of a recent conversation with one player: "[She] was like, `Can water polo help you get a scholarship?' And I'm like, `Yes. That's how I--yes, I--I got a scholarship. I've talked about this.'" Villa laughs. "It's funny to see when the light bulb finally turns on for them."
Cori Matuta, the mother of 11-year-old twin girls, would struggle to afford their participation on the team without the help of Project 2020. She observes that her girls are talking "more seriously about eating healthy" and adds, speaking of Villa: "They love her. We (parents) love her, too. She always has a positive attitude with the girls and with us. I'm just grateful that the girls are here."
A Vision for the Future
Villa looks forward to starting self-sustaining Project 2020 teams in low-income communities across the country. "If someone wanted to write a huge check for Project 2020," Villa remarks, only half joking, she could fund new 2020 teams, which would then be responsible for finding their own ways to keep costs down for participants--a theme she returns to again and again: "It all comes down to keeping it low-cost."
Funding comes from four sources: Beyond Barriers Athletic Foundation--a nonprofit charitable organization--subsidizes the bulk of participants' fees; Project 2020 pays for equipment, uniforms, and additional funding for families who need it; the city of Menlo Park owns the pool; and a for-profit company pays Villa's coaching salary and leases the pool from the city.
This creates a tangled web of insurance, financial, and legal red tape that hampers Villa's ability to use volunteers--one of Project 2020's greatest potential resources. "So many people have reached out" that she's had to turn down, Villa says, a note of frustration in her voice.
Then, with characteristic confidence, she adds: "It's a matter of pulling all those resources together. I could make that happen. It's about finding the best way to do it and following the rules."
With less red tape and more money, the Belle Haven program would offer academic support, nutrition and health education--even swimming lessons for parents--all at little or no cost to participants. Villa rattles off a list of local organizations she'd like to work with to coordinate tutoring and water polo "because it's not going to matter if you don't do well in school." For now she does what she can with what she has, seizing opportunities with the determination and optimism that fueled her success as a water polo player.
An eighth-grader from a wealthier neighborhood recently approached Villa and asked if she and her classmates could set up a peer-tutoring program for the team. Insurance and space issues prevent tutoring sessions at the pool, but Villa has learned that the elementary school next door has a classroom open until 5 p.m. "Now I'm working to set that up," she says.
If her water polo past is any indication of what Villa can accomplish when she works to set things up, look out: 2020 is going to be great.
To support or learn more about Project 2020, go to http://projecttwentytwenty.weebly.com/.
This article will appear in the Spring 2014 issue of SkipShot Magazine
