Captain of country’s first all-Black high school rowing team says sport gave him discipline he needed

DeKALB – An award-winning author from the west side of Chicago recently told dozens on Northern Illinois University’s campus how competitive rowing gave him the fortitude he needed to rise above his childhood circumstances.

Arshay Cooper visited NIU on April 11 to speak in the Carl Sandburg Auditorium in the Holmes Student Center for Project FLEX, a university program that helps incarcerated youth in northern Illinois find better paths through sports.

Cooper grew up in Chicago in the 1990s, went to what he remembers as an underfunded school, and said he often could hear gunshots from his childhood bedroom at night.

“I skipped over pools of blood walking out of my place,” Cooper said. “I’ve been chased, ran for my life. We have seen what some soldiers have seen in war, but before we were 15 years old. So it was very hard for me to go to school and think about math and science when I was living that way. And I didn’t know what to do about it. I felt like God existed everywhere but that neighborhood.”

Project FLEX – which stands for fitness, leadership, experience – brought about a half-dozen youth from the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice Illinois Youth Center in Warrenville to hear Cooper’s presentation.

Jenn Jacobs, associate professor of sport and exercise psychology and co-founder of Project FLEX, said the program aims to help incarcerated youth reimagine their possible futures through athletic and educational experiences.

“[Project FLEX tries to] help those who are incarcerated just have a little bit more positive outcomes while they’re there, but then to set them up for success,” Jacobs said. “Once they’re leaving, they’re able to draw from lessons – life lessons, relationship lessons – from what they’ve learned and go succeed in [their] home life [and] job life beyond incarceration.”

Sometimes as young people we want lightning to strike, but here’s the thing: Lightning just doesn’t strike. You have to have something in you to attract the lightning, and for me it was commitment, it was self-control, it was discipline, it was connection, it was love, it was forgiveness.”

—  Arshay Cooper

According to the Project FLEX website, 93% of incarcerated youth in Illinois return to an internment facility within five years of the end of their original sentence.

Hannah DiSilverio, a graduate assistant for Project FLEX studying in NIU’s kinesiology and physical education department, said the program aims to reduce that figure by incorporating sports and life skills into the daily lives of incarcerated youth.

“We’re really using the power of sport to kind of reimagine the life of an incarcerated youth,” DiSilverio said.

While many students use sports as a catharsis for the trials and tribulations of everyday life, Cooper said that for him and many of his classmates 30 years ago, contact sports would frequently trigger trauma responses because of the violent setting they were growing up in.

Cooper later discovered a noncontact sport, which he said he found as mediative as it was communicatively demanding, that taught him the wherewithal he needed to achieve his childhood dreams.

In 1997, Cooper was asked to join a high school rowing team, but because none of the sport’s Olympic athletes looked like him or reflected the world he was used to, he initially declined the offer.

The next day, however, he had a change of heart.

“Everyone was signing up for this sport, and this was the sport that was going to give us the opportunity to be the first all-Black high school rowing team in the country,” Cooper said. “Like, to actually make history, and opportunities are for those who need it and those who make themselves available for it, and I didn’t know if I was ready for that.”

Free Chicago pizza ended up being enough of a reward to spur his involvement – and make history.

Cooper was a part of – and eventually made captain of – the first all-Black rowing team in the country, located at Manley High School in Chicago.

Now, Cooper is a two-time Golden Oar recipient and an award-winning author. His self-published memoir “Suga Water” became the inspiration for “A Most Beautiful Thing,” a 2020 documentary chronicling the history-making rowing team, directed by filmmaker Mary Mazzio and narrated by actor and rapper Common. The documentary was executive produced by Grant Hill and Dwyane Wade. Common and Wade also are Chicago natives.

Cooper said competitive rowing taught him how to not step over the messes left by others, both abstract and real, and to take time to make the world a better place than he found it. It also allowed him to fulfill his childhood dream by becoming a personal chef for World Wrestling Entertainment, Warner Brothers film sets and professional athletes.

“Sometimes as young people we want lightning to strike, but here’s the thing: Lightning just doesn’t strike,” Cooper said. “You have to have something in you to attract the lightning, and for me it was commitment, it was self-control, it was discipline, it was connection, it was love, it was forgiveness.”