Though they recognize their task has a certain Sisyphean quality to it, coaches and student athletes at Frederick Douglass Academy are no quitters. For four years now, they have worked to transform a filthy and forbidding Harlem park into a clean and safe green space. Named for the highest-ranking black officer in the U.S. Army until his death in 1922, Colonel Young Park is just three blocks from the school. Yet, Frederick Douglass Academy athletes were forced until recently to take buses and trains to other neighborhood parks to practice and compete because theirs was a

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Jonathan Fickies

grassless, fetid, no-go zone. “It’s a lot better than it was, but it’s still not great,” says Dillon Sparks, a 10th-grade honor student who plays shortstop on the school’s baseball team. “We’ve shoveled a lot of, well, you know, but it’s our neighborhood park and we’re going to make it what it can and should be.” On May 22, Sparks joined 50 other Frederick Douglass Academy teammates, coaches and teachers in what has become a twice-yearly clean-up, part of the wider New York City It’s My Park Day. Before there was a slogan there was Julius Key, a former Frederick Douglass Academy baseball coach and community activist who has led the cleanup. “Until Julius, not a single improvement was done here for decades,” says Patrick Mangan, the school’s athletic director, who coaches the basketball team. “Now at least we can use the park for practices and games.” Key, who teaches history at CUNY, has asked the Parks Department to lay artificial turf on the playing fields and sod throughout Colonel Young Park. When the planned upgrade is complete, the school’s baseball, softball, football, track, soccer and lacrosse teams will use the facility. “This is already a great success because it’s an excellent way to show students the need to take on the responsibility of improving their own community,” said Mangan.