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Foster gives back to the Community
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Growing up in the Richmond, California in the 1970's, Carl Foster remembers a city that had various outlets for young athletes in the community.
"I remember being between 9 and 12 and starting to get instruction in sports. I learned how to play basketball, softball and flag football all at the Shields-Reid Park and recreation center in North Richmond."
It was this early interaction with positive role models and coaches such as George Brown and Jerry Anderson, who both still work with kids in the Richmond community, that helped Foster to want to give back to youth athletics in the realm of high school basketball. Foster was the long time director of the Richmond based Slam-N-Jam basketball organization, which helps to mentor and guide basketball student athletes through the various teams and events they sponsor. The organization has helped hundreds of student athletes secure college scholarships over the twenty years Slam-N-Jam has been in existence.
"I had a chance to help impact the lives of a lot of great kids with the Slam N Jam organization," said Foster.
Athletes such as Leon Powe, Eddie House, Drew Gooden, Jovan Harris, Circus King, Ayinde Ubaka, Jamal Hill, Drew Gordon, Wendell Mckines, Eli Holman, Justin Brown, Larry Gurganious, Desmond Simmons and host of others have played for and received guidance from the organization throughout the years.
But after 12 years in the Slam-N-Jam organization, Foster stepped down as director to give back to the immediate Richmond community. He has been named the Athletic Director of the Richmond Police Athletic League, which encompasses a wide variety of youth sports in the Richmond Metropolitan area and Contra Costa County.
Formed in 1982, Richmond PAL is a non-profit organization that provides a positive alternative to the streets for boys and girls aged 5 to 18. The program using police officers, local business and community leaders as positive role models and by using athletics to give the children of Richmond a positive outlet.
"Richmond PAL is very important in the city of Richmond," said Foster. "It is the one thing that links the protection of the city with the future of the city."
Richmond PAL impacts youth in areas such as little league baseball, Pop Warner football, basketball, boxing, golf and soccer. Richmond PAL just built a state of the art basketball, weight room and boxing facility at 2200 McDonald Avenue. Besides the various sports programs, Richmond PAL has various other activities related to youth including a music studio, computer lab and academic after school programs.
"Carl Foster was the best fit for the position of Athletic Director," said Michael Booker, a board of the director with Richmond PAL, police officer in the Richmond Police Department and founder of the highly successful Richmond Bad Boyz, high school basketball organization. "With his areas of expertise in youth sports, along with being a native son of Richmond, he knows a lot of the ills of the city, as well as the bright spots."
Foster said that the city of Richmond needs to "offer better educational options for its young people, an in particular, to help provide support for single parents that have to work 40 to 50 hours a week to navigate handling a family." He said there are a lot of people concerned about Richmond and its future and they use sports and in particular Richmond PAL as a pivotal anchor in the community. As the new athletic director he says he wants to expand that with short and long term goals for Richmond PAL.
"Short term, my goal is to add more sports to the sports PAL provides. I want other kids to be impacted by positive role models and group activities that keep them active, energized in an environment with productive members of the community. Long term wise, I want to build the most comprehensive youth sports program in Northern California."
While the city of Richmond is met with some bad news from time to time, Foster says this news should not overshadow the city and the people who are doing the right things.
"Because I am from Richmond, people cannot tell me bad things about Richmond," said Foster. "Bad things happen from time to time, but there are many more people in the city doing positive and productive things."
