Urban Games Experience.Com: Inner City Youth Sports, Fitness and Entertainment Outlet

By Rufus E. Carpenter

URBAN GAMES EXPERIENCE SYSTEM


This Fun, Fresh, and Raw Blend of Music, Dance, and Talent!
A managed year-round sports and recreational program created for urban America. This group-paced program provides participants with an opportunity to grow, learn, and excel in a social environment. This program is divided into four thirteen-week periods that incorporate amusement, curiosity, and creativity as well as confidence building, entertainment, and exercise for the body.

Start yourself or child on this lifetime journey of success. Its fun, a great program, and builds pride in self, culture, and community. Leagues and community teams are now forming where instructors and participants are dedicated to developing superior concentration, courage and patience, inner-strength, confidence and self-esteem, and physical fitness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543430356

Rufus E. Carpenter

Rufus Carpenter is an African American father of a thirteen-year-old son and three adult sons. Like many other African American parents, Mr. Carpenter struggles against long odds to steer his children safely through their formative years to become productive citizens. As he watched so many families struggle with problems like academic failure, drugs, sex, and violence, he wondered if there was a way he could help. He’s spent the last sixteen years of his life working to solve this issue. He developed an idea for a prevention/intervention program called Urban Performing Arts System - a Rites of Passage initiative. He is the CEO and commissioner of Urban Games Society Inc., a nonprofit child guidance and youth self-help agency that provides for the welfare of children in such areas as academic failure prevention, drug abuse prevention, life skills training, and positive social development. His business career positions have included: senior vice president, area manager and managing partner for Northlake Foods Inc. Mr. Carpenter was consistently recognized as the prevailing leader and driving force of leadership that designed and implemented the company’s operational midlevel executives training programs. These programs brought awareness and knowledge of his special ability of promoting closer working relationships among a diverse group of people in a business environment. He has dedicated his professional life to the continuous and dynamic force in the development of people. Mr. Carpenter, a native of Virginia and a US Army retiree, received numerous civic and professional awards and honors during his twenty-year military career. In recognition for his outstanding accomplishments during the Gulf Crisis, Mr. Carpenter’s portrait has been placed in the Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis, Virginia.

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Copyright © 2017 by Rufus E. Carpenter. 553471

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017909463

   ISBN:   Softcover     978-1-5434-3034-9

                Hardcover   978-1-5434-3036-3

                EBook         978-1-5434-3035-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 08/30/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

URBAN GAMES EXPERIENCE.COM

Inner City Youth Sports, Fitness and Entertainment Outlet

Providing Fun Healthy Choices

To celebrate the true spirit of Black America by nurturing our children,

Embracing our legacy of great pioneers, and forging our way into a new future!

Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction

Urban Games Experience

History

Chapter 2 Urban Games: An In-Depth Description

Introduction

Competitive Leagues

Competitive Classification

Color Program

Competition Events

Competition Structure

Local Franchise Entry Fee

Lifelong Franchises

Chapter 3 Getting Started

Annual Organization Meeting

The Urban Games Nationals

Joining A League

Starting A New League

Benefits Of Registering

Rules

About Teams

Personnel/Leadership Roles And Duties

Setting Up Your Team Roster

Putting Together a Team Roster

Scheduling

Face-Offs

Competition Area

Dress And Attire

Scoring

Scoring Guidelines

Scoring Standards

Rating System

Chapter 4 Basic Foundations of UGE Training

Program

Readiness

Change

Conditioning

Chapter 5 Competition Events

Gospel

African Rhythm And Beats

Drill And Step

African Dance

Open Talent

Martial Arts

Chapter 6 Establishing a Local Program

At The Onset

Develop And Grow Your Program

Have Fun Establishing A League

Assemble Support Personnel And Elect A Commissioner

Establish The League Rules

Establish A Team Roster Size

Establish A League Schedule

Score Your Team

Conduct The Show

Establish A Prize

Have Fun Keeping It Simple

Author’s Acknowledgements

About the Author

APPENDIXES/BONUS

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to the many families involved in youth and community development activities all across this country. As we participate in these types of events, we’re truly amazed by the amount of passion and talent in our young people.

Most of all, it’s dedicated to you— coaches, instructors, mentors, and parents—who have volunteered time and other resources to teach young people discipline, responsibility, tolerance, communication skills, and self-confidence. These are the characteristics needed by so many children for continuous growth and development in our communities.

If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say. There lived a great people—a black people—who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.

—Martin Luther King Jr.

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Chapter 1

Introduction

A Word from the Author

Karibu!

(Welcome in Swahili)

I will never forget Sunday night April 14, 1996. It was the second night of the Black College Dance Exchange 1996 National Conference at Virginia State University. We were there to get some ideas on how to implement the Urban Games Experience (UGE) as a national sports program. At that event, we knew that the Urban Games Experience was the answer. The excitement that filled the air as they called out the dance troupe from Hampton University was an unmistakable sign of affirmation for us that a national movement centering around the Urban Games Experience was clearly the avenue we were called to develop as a response to the seething rot threatening to chain black youth to a life sentence of crime, violence, and despair. Proud, posed, and vibrant young African Americans filled the stage with bursts of bright colors, and we saw in them the representation of a diverse, rich culture. As we watched them perform their routine, we felt the freedom of their expression explode in our soul, calling us to join them. We became entranced by their performances, drawn into their stories, captured by their messages of celebration and victory. That night, the collective movements of young African Americans took us on a journey and transformed our perspective such that we will never again see the strength and endurance of the African American spirit in the same light. The heart-throbbing blend of African drums, the wailing cries of old Negro spirituals, the merging of contemporary urban beats—all combined with agile bodies that spoke the stories of hope, joy, and victory. Fresh and raw, the energy on stage reawakened a place in our soul and gave us a vision to spread that fire to Americans everywhere!

It soon became clear to us that no one cared any longer which performers were the best; all anyone cared about was the ability of the individual dancers. Even if you were from Virginia State University, you rooted for a performer on each team, and no one looked at you funny, wondering which team you supported.

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As we looked around the theater, many of the people in the crowd were the same from Saturday night night’s. Urban Games Experience is fun; it’s addicting and vastly becoming, a social activity. In fact, nearly everybody there knew someone who performed.

Urban Games Experience has become a part of the performing arts society, and it has changed the way a lot of people view the performing arts. Urban Games Experience System has the power to sweep the country as the most popular sport in urban America, and although nearly everybody thinks they are an expert on it, there is a lot more to be learned.

A few weeks later, I was introduced to Ms. Rene Knight (an excellent, high-energy African dance instructor), who invited me to visit her Thursday night African dance class in Richmond, Virginia. I was surprised by the amount of fun and talent the dancers had going through their sessions and practice routines.

Here I was watching something so much a part of my culture as my mind raced, trying to find the right format to showcase this raw talent nationally to an inner-city group that is doing the Tootsie Roll. The answer: The Urban Games (UG) is creating a national special interest group of people in the sport of Urban Games Experience System coming together as the Urban Games Society.

This book might seem very detailed, but don’t let it scare you because Urban Games Experience (UGE) is quite easy to do and enjoy. Basically, all you need is a system to play the right music and space. It’s that easy. The idea is to have fun, and setting up a UGE program (league and community teams in your local area) is part of that fun.

This African American heritage celebration of family and community is a managed-year-round sports and recreational program created for urban America. It’s a group-paced program