Weeks into a new school year, 500 Chicago students are walking the halls in sneakers they received at Back 2 School Kicks—an annual tradition that is growing from a shoe giveaway into something bigger.
The music filled the indoor track at Gately Stadium, a percussive beat from a DJ spinning near the center of an afternoon that felt as much like a neighborhood celebration as a back-to-school giveaway.
Children raced on the rubber track and took running starts toward the long-jump pit. Basketballs bounced across the stadium’s infield, where young people shot hoops alongside officers from the Chicago Police Department’s 5th District. Outside a side door, a line formed at an ice cream truck.
And in another corner, former NBA player Alando Tucker was on his hands and knees, judging a boys-versus-girls plank competition. Twenty dollars—and bragging rights—were on the line.
But amid all the activity on this Saturday in August, some of the most important moments were quieter ones: a child opening a box, pulling back the tissue paper and seeing a new pair of sneakers inside.
For 10-year-old Devin, a fifth grader at Spencer Elementary School where he participates in Youth Guidance’s Community & Afterschool Programs, they were white Nike Air Force 1s.
His mother, Tamika Carrington, had brought Devin and his two siblings from Chicago’s West Side after hearing about Back 2 School Kicks through their school. It was their first time attending.
School started Monday.
That timing was the point.
Two days before Chicago Public Schools students returned to their classrooms, approximately 500 young people and their families gathered Aug. 22 at Gately Stadium in the West Pullman community for the fifth annual Back 2 School Kicks Chicago, a collaboration among The Athlete’s Foot, the Community Retail Association, Youth Guidance, the Refugee Life Foundation, the Arcitec Foundation, and the Arab-American Business and Professional Association.
Students receiving shoes walked away with the kinds of sneakers children notice in school hallways: Nike Dunks. Air Force 1s. Jordan 1s.
That distinction matters to Ash Darwish.
“When they go to school, we want them to feel good about themselves,” he said.
“When they go to school, we want them to feel good about themselves.” — Ash Darwish
Why the Shoes Matter
Darwish owns six The Athlete’s Foot franchises in the Chicago area and has first-hand insight into what shoes can mean to a child.
Growing up in an immigrant family without much money, Darwish attended Proviso West High School. His family couldn’t afford the sneakers some of his classmates wore. Instead, he remembers wearing ProWings from Payless ShoeSource.
Other kids noticed.
“They used to tease me all the time and make fun of my shoes,” Darwish recalled.
That memory helps explain why organizers deliberately choose shoes young people actually want to wear. The giveaway is intended to offer something less tangible along with the footwear: confidence and dignity.
For Tucker, the story is strikingly similar.
Before playing basketball at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and reaching the NBA, Tucker grew up in a single-parent household, the middle of five children. He remembers getting into a fight at age 10 because other children made fun of his shoes.
“I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do,” Tucker recalled.
Long before Tucker became a professional basketball player, he was also Darwish’s customer, coming into his shoe store to buy sneakers. Years later, their conversations turned toward what they could do together for children growing up with some of the same pressures they remembered.
Tucker supported Back 2 School Kicks from its earliest days, initially as what he calls a “silent partner.” After the first year, he saw an opportunity to make the effort bigger.
This year, Tucker’s Arcitec Foundation joined as a partner. The foundation uses lessons from sports—resilience, discipline, communication and teamwork—to help young people imagine and build their futures.
Tucker describes it through the metaphor of an architect: Everyone starts with an empty blueprint. The work is about helping young people build the foundation, skills and relationships to fill it in.
The goal isn’t necessarily to produce another professional athlete. It is to help a young person discover what else might be possible.
“You want to be a lawyer, doctor, we have access to that,” Tucker said. “It’s access that’s the key.”
More Than a Giveaway
Back 2 School Kicks began during the disruption of the pandemic, when organizers saw families struggling and wondered what local businesses and community organizations could do together.
The first event served roughly 100 young people. The next grew to about 250. Then came 300.
This year: 500.
As the event expanded, so did the coalition behind it.
The Athlete’s Foot supplies the sneakers. The Community Retail Association mobilizes businesses and helps provide food. Youth Guidance helps connect the effort to students and families, particularly through schools and communities where the resources can make the greatest difference. Other community partners have joined along the way.
At Gately, young people weren’t simply ushered through a line and sent home with a box.
They stayed. They raced. They ate. They played basketball with police officers. They lined up for ice cream.
For Tucker, even the presence of police officers was part of the purpose. Young people may primarily encounter law enforcement through the lens of enforcement, he said. Playing basketball together creates a different kind of interaction and another way to see one another as members of the same community.
A new pair of sneakers will not eliminate the challenges facing a family or determine whether a child succeeds in school. But Tucker and Darwish know what it feels like to be the child hoping no one notices his shoes. Sometimes removing one worry can make it a little easier to walk through the schoolhouse door.
“You might meet your BAM counselor, your WOW counselor,” Tucker said. “You can actually have that confidence to engage with your education.”
“You want to be a lawyer, doctor, we have access to that. It’s access that’s the key.”
— Alando Tucker
The Next Step
Five years into the effort, the organizers are asking another question: What happens after the sneakers?
This year brought the launch of the Kick Forward Scholarship, extending an initiative built around school readiness into one that can help students continue their education after high school.
Through a partnership with City Colleges of Chicago, five students will receive $1,000 scholarships toward their community college education. The scholarship effort received initial support from the National Basketball Retired Players Association’s Legends of Basketball.
The decision to focus on City Colleges is deliberate. For some young people, Tucker said, the right path after high school may not begin at a four-year university. Community college can be a bridge to a degree, career or eventually a four-year institution.
“It’s really the access and exposure to different pathways,” Tucker said. “You may not know that’s a pathway. Let’s expose you to it.”
That philosophy is familiar to Youth Guidance.
Across its programs, Youth Guidance works with young people in schools and communities to help them navigate obstacles, build meaningful relationships with caring adults and see possibilities for their futures. At Back 2 School Kicks, that work starts with something concrete: helping children arrive at school feeling ready to walk through the door.
For Carrington, the practical value was just as real. She had come from the West Side with three children after Spencer Elementary shared information about the event. Along with the shoes, her family found food, basketball, track activities and an afternoon they could enjoy together.
And Devin had his Air Force 1s.
Across Gately Stadium, hundreds of other children carried their own boxes.
By afternoon’s end, 500 pairs of new sneakers would leave the building with 500 Chicago students.
On Monday morning, those shoes would appear somewhere else: on sidewalks and buses, in school hallways and classrooms across the city.
For the adults who had spent months bringing the event together, that journey was precisely the idea.
The shoes were never supposed to be the destination.
They were meant to help a young person take the next step.
Other community partners for Back 2 School Kicks included the What’s Your Forté Foundation, Family Focus, Think Outside Da Block, Project Impact 180, ChiGivesBack, Inc., and CHAMPS Male Mentoring, among others.
Johnathon Briggs, a former Chicago Tribune staff writer, is the director of marketing and communications at Youth Guidance.
Click here to view event photos courtesy of Rush Photography and Video Productions.