The Herald-News from Passaic, New Jersey • 6

.716 Monday, February 25, 2002 AS HERALD NEWS 1 i 1 HOMAS Continued from Al 4- I. ye 4. -dit 410) il'i- t-- .4. 0 'el 0,...1 I. 4....

I 1 1 '5 vagir A 7, i i 1 1 --''Z'A' 1 i ACt I s- 14d'i 7 7 1, 7 movie role and a job as a dancer for Kool and the Gang. He traveled with the popular funk band for two years, and then decided to get out of the business. "I was exposed to a lot of things I hadn't seen he said. "There were a lot of drugs, people trying to get to the top by sleeping with each another. It was too political." He came back to Paterson and, with about $7,000 of the money he had made from touring, opened a dance studio for kids, and started volunteering for City Serve.

After being out in the world, he felt comfortable at home. But Thomas, in tandem with the program director Richard Williams, would like to see the audience for the Ensemble grow. They want to operate a public access show, which Thomas calls "an updated version of starring the children from the Youth Ensemble, were accessible to them. "Kev just showed us a whole different lifestyle," said Vemard Pitts, 20, who started with the program when he was 12, and now is a volunteer. 'He showed us modem dance, tap dancing.

He got us excited about Thomas went a step further, and saw a vibrant talent pool in his young actors and singers. He sent them out on commercial and film auditions, something that would allow at least a few of them to see things they'd never seen before. "I danced at the Apollo three times," Pitts said. We tap-danced at the Waldorf. Bill Cosby was there, Giuliani was there.

It was huge." Part of Thomas's savvy comes from his own experience. At age 13, he auditioned to play rapper Doug E. Fresh's younger self in a rap video. He got the part, and went on to other auditions, which led to a Thomas, who is about 5 feet tall, seems like a kid himself, which is why he makes kids with no theater experience comfortable watching and performing on a stage. "Kevin's like Peter Pan," said Richard Williams, who hired Thomas two years ago.

He has an uncanny ability to relate to children. He knows how to reach them." The City Serve program has come to be a place where people evolve. First and foremost it's. somewhere for children to go after school to get homework help and supervision from 3 to 7 p.m. But Thomas has created his own program within a program, a Youth Ensemble that gives children an opportunity to find interests they may have not known Kevin Thomas, Youth director of jt ityServe Services, a 4 i i asks children i geography 1, and math .1 6., questions at St.

Paul Episcopal a e't EDie Markeyhch Herald Newts selves for a few hours a day. "These are stage-ready kids," he said. "I just take that energy and work with it." the children's abilities. Peter Pan that he is, Thomas has created an environment where kids can completely reinvent them which would deal with social issues relevant to Paterson kids. Thomas has ultimate faith in the show, but his real faith is in FE 3 GAMES Continued from Al Studies at Canada's University of Western Ontario, said the Games have "graphically shown how the Olympic movement, the Olympic Games, when successfully executed, remain a celebration of achievement." Perhaps most important, according to Barney and other experts who study the Olympic movement, these Games also offered an affirmation of the Olympic ideal a reminder of how, when the spotlight does turn to the athletes, the Games still retain the power to eclipse impressions of scandal or corruption, supersede reports of the billions of dollars it takes from government or business interests to stage the Games.

Consider the unrestrained glee of the medal winners in the men's skeleton sledding race American Shea, Austria's Martin Rettl and Switzerland's Gregor Staehli, long-time friends who embraced repeatedly and said they were "family." Shea said a few minutes after the race, "Everybody puts all this emphasis on winning gold medals and the medal count, beating other That's not what the Olympics is all about. It's about competing and bringing the world together in a peaceful, friendly competition." underdog Belarus over Sweden. Mitt Romney, president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, said. "I hoped we would have really good Games, but in some respects, they were great Games in that the Games brought the Olympic spirit to the front. "The way the spectators cheered the athletes of the world that was very touching." Of course, not everyone was as impressed with the North American hospitality.

The Cold War was revived, at least in the world of sports. Russian President Vladimir Putin, a sports fan who was watching closely from Moscow, called the Games "a flop." He charged that North American athletes had a "clear" advantage at the Games, and protested what he viewed as "excessive commercialization of the Olympic U.S. media bias and the use of referees from the National Hockey League as opposed to Europeans at Olympic hockey matches. Because the stakes at the Games are so high for nations, for political and sports leaders as well as athletes, the Salt Lake experience was clearly marked by controversies outside the control of Games unfair, announced they were considering leaving the Games and boycotting the next Summer Olympics, in Athens in 2004. The Russian rhetoric was unusually sharp.

It remained unclear whether the Russians were sincere in their threat to leave or whether they were trying to influence judges in other events, or simply trying to deflect criticism of a below-par performance. Rogge, a Belgian elected last July to an eight-year term as IOC president, indicated Thursday there was no concerted campaign against Russian interests. Still, he sent an explanatory letter to Putin. Putin responded Friday by declaring that Russia would not boycott. Romney took a philosophical view.

"Some people would say, 'Oh, the judging scandals detract from the he said. "No, that's part of the Games. We're humans, with all our foibles. You see the greatness of human spirit. And some of the weakness.

That's what it means to be on the world stage." Overall, the Salt Lake City Games received high marks. Bob Barney, director emeritus of the Center for Olympic organizers. During the first week of the Games, a scandal that had long threatened to engulf figure skating erupted. Russian pairs skaters Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze were originally awarded gold, Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier the silver even though many TV viewers in the United States and Canada and spectators at the event thought the Canadians deserved first place. After an intense public outcry, scrutiny from U.S.

and Canadian media interests, and reports that a judge said she was "pressured" into voting for the Russian pair, the International Skating Union proposed that a second set of gold medals be awarded to the Canadians. The IOC ratified that proposal, and the Canadians got their gold as well. And now a radical overhaul of the traditional scoring system for skating will be considered later this year. The decision to award a second set of gold medals to the Canadian pairs skaters opened the door to those aggrieved by judging calls in Games past and present. One week later, Russian officials irate and humiliated over judging they, too, believed Over the past four years, the USOC poured $40 million into a variety of programs ranging from salary stipends to sports medicine to insurance premiums for athletes' health coverage.

"After 25 years of struggling to find the best way to fund our sports, we've found a method that really works," Baldwin said. It worked, all right: For the first time, U.S. Wmter Games medalists came from all corners of the nation and diverse ethnic backgrounds. There was Jennifer Rodriguez, the daughter of Cuban refugees, twice winning bronze. And speedskater Derek Parra and bobsledder Vonetta Flowers, both winning gold, both becoming firsts to win Winter Games gold Parra the first Mexican Amer-- can, Flowers the first black.

As expected, crowds cheered wildly for American winners, launching into the familiar roar of "U-S-A! U-SAr for the likes ofslim Shea a third-generation Olympian, who won the skeleton race. But the crowds also enthusiastically greeted athletes from all over the world. Their appreciation showed through with loud applause for the stunning victory in the quarterfinal round of men's hockey by Thanks to the U.S. Olympic Committee's own impressive comeback, Americans can expect to be a force in those Games as well. U.S.

athletes hit bottom 14 years ago by fielding a team that won only six medals during the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. But after an all-out effort to become a winter sports superpower, the USOC, the most important of the 199 national committees in the Olympic movement but an institution long dogged by dizzying management turnover is finally getting it right in its central mission: training and supporting athletes. U.S. athletes won a record 34 medals, including 10 gold; the U.S. team's previous high medal count was 13, in Lille-hammer in 1994 and in Nagano, Japan, in 1998.

The U.S. resurgence can be traced to Calgary, where a special commission headed by New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner was appointed. Its obvious conclu- sion: It takes money and commitment to win medals. Since then, the USOC has invested millions of dollars in athlete training and support. l'-' Inr Ir 1, -A- ir -A Illetaoct ycour Flebrcoaccopd3 con tcoclisty'ss Ado1443 -4r Inv.

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