Earlier this month, the Riverside Hawks program, a staple in the Harlem community since 1961, held its annual gala at the Mandarin Hotel. The organization’s mission is to improve the lives, academic opportunities and career prospects of young people, utilizing sports as a vehicle. Almost 70% of the participants come from either Harlem, Washington Heights or the Bronx.
“The room was packed,” said board member Erika Irish Brown, chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer and global head of talent at Citi. While two of the program’s teams were honored, “the focus was really on the girls.”
The program is excited by the success of the girls’ teams overall. The program currently has 109 female participants from elementary to high school. Combining training and academic support makes them college ready. Last year’s graduating seniors are now playing collegiate basketball at Division I schools like Rider, Fairleigh Dickinson, Fordham, Hofstra and St. John’s. Brown hopes all the current participants are gaining leadership skills and learning how to be a team player.
“We want people to understand what Riverside is, and that it’s not just basketball,” said Brown. “This year, we really wanted to talk about the success of the girls’ program. … With increasing opportunities in women’s sports, we’ve seen the same for our teams at Riverside. Our teams [of all ages] are winning big tournaments. They’re a growing group of confident scholar-athletes.
“That’s the ABCs of Riverside: academics, basketball and community,” she added. “We have a track record of young men who have gone to prep schools, to college, [and] to the NBA. Now, we have that growing pipeline on the young women’s side.”
In addition to the teams, the 2023 gala honorees included Dr. Monique Couvson, CEO and president of Grantmakers for Girls of Color; Alexander Smalls, an award-winning chef and author (introduced by Sheila Johnson, owner of the Washington Mystics); and the corporation GCM Grosvenor, a global leader in alternative investments.
Brown noted that Couvson is a former basketball player who has taken an interest in the Riverside Hawks. “Knowing what being involved in sports does for young women, their futures, everything from their body images to their ambition to their competitive spirit,” Brown said. “She gave an inspirational speech about the data around what’s not happening for our young women of color and why we need to invest in them.”
