News
Welcome New Enrichment & 360 Associate, Adam Lemke-Bell
As the Enrichment & 360 Coordinator, Adam Lemke-Bell oversees our after-school tutoring program and works closely with the 80 wrestlers apart of our 360 program, which is our highest level of impact assisting athletes in all aspects of life.
By interacting with the wresters daily, Lemke-Bell prioritizes executive functioning skills as well as assists in social & emotional development.
Although new to Beat The Streets Chicago Lemke-Bell has past experience in youth development. Coming to us from the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, where he worked as a Teen Reach Manager.
A 2019 graduate from Northwestern University, Lemke-Bell wrestled for BTSC Executive Director, Mike Powell and Head BTSC Men’s Coach, Mike Boyd in high school. The opportunity to work alongside his former mentors sparked Lemke-Bell’s interest in working for Beat The Streets Chicago.
With Lemke-Bell on staff we are confident he will hold our wrestlers accountable and ensure they are on track to becoming Life Champions.
U.S. National Team Member Daniel “Dap” DeShazer Hosts Folkstyle Clinic
Beat The Streets Chicago welcomed 2x NCAA DII National Champion, U.S. National Team Member, & 2024 Olympic hopefull, Daniel “Dap” Deshazer to lead a folkstyle clinic with 50+ wrestlers in attendance.
World-class clinicians, such as Dap, are an essential part of our organization as we strive to provide easily accessible elite wrestling to Chicago youth.
Aside from running a great room, Dap briefly shared the crucial life lessons he had to learn that shaped him into the Life Champion he is today.
BTSC is ever grateful for the humility and generosity showed by our elite clinicians as their presence truly helps change lives. The whole BTSC community will be watching as Dap attempts to make his first Olympic team in 2024.
BTSC Wrestling On The Beach
Saturday, September 9th a crew of BTSC wrestlers & coaches said a final goodbye to the summer season by traveling to 31st street beach for a fun morning conditioning & wrestling workout.
Although too cold to swim, wrestlers participated in a circuit followed by several live matches under the official UWW Beach Wrestling rules.
This event introduced wrestlers to a new style of wrestling & provided a day to decompress before preseason training ramps up. It is always nice to get fresh air and push the limit in new environments, especially an environment with a view.
Fall Volunteer Opportunities!
There are countless ways to get involved this season! We are ALWAYS in need of more hands on deck.
Beat The Streets Chicago Fall Classic
| Date: October 14th-15th | ||
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Need: Set up crew, clean up crew, table workers, concession help |
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| Link to register |
After-School Tutor Volunteers
| Date & Time: Weekdays August-November, 3:30pm-5:45pm | ||
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Need: Assist kids with homework and one-on-one tutoring in various subjects |
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Requirements: Must be 18 years of age |
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Contact: lcleofe@btschicago if interested |
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| More details |
Volunteer Drivers
| Date & Time: CPS school days, 2:30pm-4:30pm | ||
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Need: People to pick up wrestlers from school and bring them to the Beat The Streets Chicago Midway facility. |
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Requirements: Must be 18 years of age, have a valid drivers license. Would be driving our vans, so experience driving vans is preferred. |
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Contact: irose@btschicago.org if interested |
For more volunteer opportunities regarding coaching, please reach out to Patrick Martinez, pmartinez@btschicago.org
8 Summer Interns Head Back To School
Huge thank you to our eight summer interns!
- Alvaro Perez
- Josh Kwiatowski
- Rafael Soto
- Sydney Park
- Torry Early
- Cameron White
- Cameron Hargrove
- Ghee Rachal
Every year, Beat The Streets Chicago welcomes interns to manage the demands that come with the busy Summer Season.
With coaching & facility management comprising the bulk of their responsibilities, much of our success this summer can be attributed to our group of committed interns.
As an organization we are extremely thankful for those who exceptional young people who want to give back to the City and to the sport of wrestling that has shaped their lives. Anyone interested in interning in summer 2024 should keep an eye out for an application on our website in January.
Information regarding the application process found here
The Beat The Streets Chicago Young Professionals Board To Hold Their Largest fundraiser of the year with a goal of raising $50,000
The Young Professional’s Board is gearing up for its largest event of the year. Join the Young Professionals as they run the Lifetime Half marathon & 5k on September 24th to raise a goal of $50,000.
How can you help:
- Support A Runner – Want to see your friend run hard and celebrate an amazing cause? Pledge a donation to your favorite runner or our overall team goal!
- Spread the word – Share your favorite runner’s event and donation info on social media, recruit your friends to come run, and spread the word about the life-changing work done by Beat The Streets.
As always, the Young Professionals thank you for your support!
Beat The Streets Chicago Serve Over 300 Youth During Summer Camp
We are proud to say that during this year’s summer camp over 300 kids ages 5-18 registered for 962 one-week slots, including wrestling and tumbling at 4 locations and Summer Enrichment at our Midway location.
Beat the Streets Chicago’s goal is to make wrestling accessible to all Chicago youth. This year, we provided $105,000 in camp scholarships in addition to the grant received from Chicago Public Schools that allowed us to offer camp free to CPS students. Over 75% of total registration fees were waived to ensure that there were no financial barriers for any child wanting to wrestle with us this summer.
Our camps included numerous fun games as well as technique taught by several of our high level coaches. Youth from across Chicago were able to spend the bulk of their summer in a friendly, supportive environment allowing them to connect with other youth, develop character, and improve physical literacy.
Our camps are designed to give our wrestlers structure that is both fun and beneficial during summer vacation. Now that school is back in session, we hope each wrestler involved in our camps leveled up in some way whether it be academically, athletically, or emotionally.
Get To know Every New BTSC Employees
What Makes a Community? Reflections on 2022-23
It’s easy for me to talk about wrestling. I live it. I breathe it. I know it works. I know it changes lives. So why is it so hard for me to describe what exactly we do at Beat the Streets? As we end the 2022-23 year, I find myself struggling for the right words, even while I know it has been a phenomenal year.
Too often, we flip-flop between sports vocabulary (matches, tournaments, practices and state qualifiers) and nonprofit vocabulary (programs, impact, social-emotional learning, theory of change). But neither feels right for us. We are neither a typical sports club doing nonprofit work nor a normal charity-funded youth program doing sports. We are more.
We are a community.
We are a community united by wrestling and reinforced by year-round opportunities to engage and build lasting relationships. Like any strong community, we look out for each other, ensuring that all wrestlers can access the resources they need to become Life Champions. Our community is a place to belong for all Chicagoans who share our values and culture.
Strong communities provide a sense of belonging.
Strong communities meet their members’ oft-changing needs.
Strong communities’ members support each other.
Strong communities save lives.
Wrestling is the entry point into our community. And, we believe wrestling by itself is powerful – the best vehicle for self-improvement, in fact. But beyond wrestling, some of our community members need more. Not everyone needs the same type of support or the same amount of support. We’re here for our wrestlers, whatever they might need. I suppose we can call these extra support systems programs, but they really are opportunities, created to meet needs, open to all, accessed by many and critical to some.
Some organizations focus on one or two aspects: sports plus tutoring or sports plus mentoring or enrichment in a safe community space. We believe we are alone in the local nonprofit sector offering a combination of all five: sports, academic support, enrichment, mentoring and community. Yes, we have a programmatic approach to each, but more importantly we customize the experiences we deliver to the needs of each of our community members individually.
How does that play out for us?
Last year, we served 3,000 unique wrestlers who in total registered 4,500 times for our programs, events and activities. 1,700 wrestlers were guest participants at our events. 1,300 we’d call our “Beat the Streets” team.
52% of our team of 1,300 came mostly for the wrestling. With world-class clinicians and the top coaching staff in Chicago, we’re here for that! These 675 sports-focused wrestlers received not only phenomenal wrestling instruction available to our whole community, but also the powerful message of our values-based coaching style.
Almost half, or 625 “Impact Wrestlers“ on our Beat the Streets team, accessed additional opportunities and events within our community throughout the year. This is the group for whom we start talking about delivering impact both on and off the mat.
Intensity deepens with engagement. Over 25% of the Impact Wrestlers group, or 160 “High Impact” wrestlers, not only wrestled with us throughout the year, they also took part in a variety of enrichment activities, including academic support, travel, and life skills workshops.
Sometimes, even that isn’t enough. 50% of our 160 High Impact Wrestlers need even more support to become Life Champions. We do whatever it takes for our 80 “Three-Sixty Wrestlers” which could mean helping them resolve homelessness, work with their families, secure scholarships, access city and state resources, get a ride to practice or simply feel seen. Whatever they need as individuals.
It’s much easier for me to talk about our community of wrestlers and how deeply they engage with us. Their stories compel us, their needs drive what we do. Nevertheless, we have to organize ourselves as a business, to ensure that we are offering the highest quality services to anyone in our community who might need them. I’m delighted to say that we’ve spent a good part of this past year tweaking our organizational structure and putting a strong leadership team in place to do just that.
Wrestling – headed by former World Team Member Patrick Martinez, Coach Martinez focuses on bringing the highest quality wrestling experience to our entire community, from tots to high school, through seasonal programs, clinics and tournaments. With six primary wrestling sites and the SCORE partnership at twenty Chicago Public Schools, Martinez is able to bring the power of wrestling to youth throughout the City and beyond. He is joined by Head Men’s Coach Mike Boyd and Head Women’s Coach Sammie Barrientos and a roster of over 200 paid and volunteer coaches.
Enrichment – headed by teacher and wrestler Leila Cleofe, Coach Leila manages our vast menu of enrichment activities, including our flagship Life Champions Academy, camps, college visits, scholarships, and cultural excursions. Coach Leila’s team also includes the “Three-Sixty Wrestlers” program, which coordinates the myriad of services required to support our community members most in need of additional resources.
Academic Support – also managed by Coach Leila is our Academic Support Services. This includes our organized programs such as the After School Tutoring Center and our program that matches individual tutors to wrestlers needing assistance in specific subjects. It also includes meeting wrestlers’ requests for help on one-off projects, such as a college essay guidance, homework help, assistance with research projects and help enrolling in school or signing up for FAFSA.
Mentoring – our formal mentoring program relies on our Young Professionals, our alumni and our connections within the Chicago wrestling community. We deliver mentoring both through our Life Champions Academy and one:one matching of mentors and coaches to wrestlers as part of our “Three-Sixty” program. Informally, our coaches develop meaningful mentor relationships with individual wrestlers organically throughout the seasons.
Community – the hardest to codify but the most important to changing lives is the sense of community we build at Beat the Streets Chicago. Our staff, our wrestlers, our families, our donors, our coaches and our supporters all come together in a supportive, affirming place for all of us to belong and celebrate each other. From formal activities and events to online platforms to impromptu birthday parties to friendships to ensuring that every youth has a positive adult relationship: we are a year-round culture-first community doing everything we can to match resources to the needs of our youth wrestlers so that they may go on to become Life Champions.
It takes structure and resources to manage our community. In addition to coaches Patrick, Leila, Mike and Sammie, we’re thrilled to have on our team Ian Rose as Director of Facilities and Events, Cathy Yen as Director of Strategy and Finance, Hannah Weigel as Development Coordinator, Justin Hames as Marketing Coordinator, Alex Madrigal as Assistant Enrichment Coordinator, Chris Helm as Facilities and Program Associate and Ryan Cone as our Administrative Assistant. We’re shortly going to announce our newest hire who will manage our tutoring center and Three-Sixty Program as well as announce the dozen incoming Up2Us coaches for the 2023-24 year. These are the people who hold our community together.
So, let’s try this again:
What is Beat the Streets Chicago?
We are a vibrant community accessed through wrestling and organized to help our community members get what they need to become Life Champions.
What do we do?
Whatever we can; whatever it takes; whatever our members are looking to us to provide.
How do we know it is working?
3,000 wrestlers participated in our community last year.
1,300 of these wrestlers call themselves “Beat the Streets” wrestlers.
625 of our Beat the Streets wrestlers are here for more than just wrestling.
160 of our wrestlers seeking additional resources are deeply engaged year-round in both wrestling AND enrichment activities.
80 of these wrestlers need three hundred and sixty degrees of support, which we do our best to provide.
We must be doing something right.
Thank you to each and every member of the Beat the Streets Chicago community. You are Beat the Streets and we are here for you.