Grigsby battles through defense and TUSD
Rincon High School running back Ty Grigsby put on a show earlier this month with a 345 yard, eight touchdown performance and earned himself the distinction of being the State of Arizona’s High School Player of the Week. Last week, Grigsby’s performance was recognized by the Cardinals organization and he was awarded The Crystal Football.
Had it not been for a chance encounter in a Tucson church, Grisby, a senior in the Tucson Unified School District system, would have likely been deemed ineligible to play for the Rincon Rangers.
Since his sophomore year, Grigsby struggled through the TUSD system with very bad grades. Ty’s mother Lawanda Grigsby constantly tried to figure out what was wrong and how she and her son could turn things around. She reached out to Rincon administrators to no avail. She knew her son was an earnest young man, who was trying to succeed, but no one else seemed to be interested in trying to help identify the issues that held him back.
Ty would bring home F’s during the regular school year, but his mother would enroll him in summer courses to ensure that he would get back on track to graduation. During those summer classes he would come back with straight A’s and when the school tested him for Special Ed he passed with flying colors. Ms. Grisby was stumped. How could he perform in those classes and fail in the Fall and Spring semesters?
Last February, while in church, Ty and his mom met Gloria Copeland. Copeland, one of the original plaintiff’s representatives in the District’s desegregation case, has dedicated her life to all kids in the District. Ty would not be an exception, and Ty, his mom and Copeland went to work to get him back on track and back on the football field.
“The first thing they told me was he was very humble,” explained Copeland during an interview on the James T. Harris radio show. “That is true. The next thing they told me was he was a hell of an athlete. That is true. He came to school every day. That is true. He tried but he struggled. That is true. The teachers loved him. I don’t know how true that is. So I said to her if all of this is going on and the mother is not an absentee mother, like you try to paint mothers,” said Copeland referring to TUSD administrators, “and he has never had a discipline problem, and he is here every day, why aren’t you helping him? He came to them struggling and the mother was down there and they did nothing. Because they didn’t think they had to do anything. This is not an isolated incident. If anybody pulls up the scores in TUSD this is not a black problem or brown problem, this is a student problem in TUSD.”
Copeland turned to Maria Figueroa, and together they began the process of putting together a “village” of sorts to give Ty the help he needed. With that “village” started almost immediately to show strong signs of improvement.
Copeland says Ty is not an isolated case when it comes to students suffering in TUSD’s current system.
“He (Ty) is doing well. He has one class he is having a problem is and it is math and it is my understanding that there are things being put in to help in get on top of that. There are people in the community, who have volunteered to tutor him, to ensure he gets the GPA to get into the University of Arizona where he wants to go to. Ty’s story is just one of the stories, and I wish I could tell you that it was isolated because if it was I wouldn’t have been doing this since 1976. This is not isolated. This community needs to come together and hold this district and (superintendent) Sanchez responsible for these kids not being educated,” stated Copeland.
During the Crystal Football award celebration at Rincon last week, Ty by honored by members of the Arizona Cardinal’s front office as well as the mascot Big Red. Only one Governing Board member, Michael Hicks, was on hand to honor accomplishment. Hicks made sure to congratulate Ty for his work both on and off the field, and the hard work and dedication of Lawanda.
Neither Lawanda nor Copeland were surprised that Hicks was the lone representative from central leadership to show. H.T. Sanchez sent a photographer to capture the moment to be used for his own PR purposes later. That is how TUSD works: optics are everything and the only thing.
“But he is so humble,” Lawanda told Harris referring to Ty. “He told me that the Cardinals were coming to give him a trophy and I got excited. When he got home he didn’t talk about it though. When they gave him the trophy he was very quiet. Very humble. Didn’t brag. Didn’t boast. None of that,” Lawanda explained. “I had another parent say that if he was at Salpointe,” referring to the Catholic high school in town, “everyone would have been there. But him being at Rincon it didn’t matter. I can’t afford to take him to Salpointe, so Rincon was the way to go.”
“I want to say this about the end of this journey,” said Copeland. “Michael Hicks was the only one there. The big three weren’t there. Sanchez was not there. He has yet to call the child to congratulate him. He did not mention it at the Tuesday Board meeting. He didn’t show up, Abel Morales was not there. It was like it did not happen. If it had been University High, or Sabino and Ty had been of another color I guarantee you they would be out there. But this kid is one of the kids they throw away.” Copeland said Sanchez “is constantly doing public appearances of drop outs and he has the mayor out there and police chief. If not for the grace of God and that he had a strong mother he would have been one of those dropouts. Kids don’t dropout, TUSD pushes them out. Then they go out and pretend they want them there and they retrieve them.”
Sanchez and his public relations crew enlist community leaders for his regularly scheduled publicity stunt, in which they visit the homes of TUSD students who have left school prematurely. Photos of the visits are then splashed across social media and published by complicit news outlets to promote the leaders at the expense of the kids’ privacy.
Ty Grisby not only defeats his opponents on the field, but his kind heart and gentle demeanor has earned him a “village” and a Crystal Football, and a chance at a very bright future.
At the same time, TY provided TUSD and City of Tucson leaders a valuable lesson: if you build good schools and support good kids, authentic publicity will follow.