Ministers With Balls

Of at least 350 players, Clarke estimates, he lost about 35 to prison or death.

"I had a couple players get killed last year," Clarke says.

One of the boys was 24-year-old Brandon Strickland, who died in a drive-by shooting last April at 41st Street and Chestnut. Clarke coached Strickland at the YMCA and in a church league when Strickland was a teen.

Last May, another of Clarke's players, 18-year-old Ronnie Fredrick, was shot dead, police say, after he was involved in a home invasion.

Clarke has a loud, in-your-face coaching style, mixing tough love with a demand for respect. He admits that he might reach more kids with a fatherly style like Wainright's. "I'm learning how to be humble," Clarke says. "By the time I get another 10, 15 years on me, I hope to be as wise as he is. I don't think I'm doing a bad job now. What happened with Calvin, man, Calvin had the kids who wanted to be something. I got a new era of kids. You got to sell these things to the kids now."

Clarke occasionally ran into Wainright on the basketball courts around town. Their teams sometimes squared off against each other in tournaments or other league play. Wainright saw that his former player now had the same vision: trying to teach life lessons to the most vulnerable kids.

This year, Wainright watched the way Clarke coached the sixth- and seventh-grade basketball team at King Middle School, where Wainright had been working for a couple of years and was coaching the eighth-grade team. Wainright saw fire in Clarke's style, the way he commanded the boys around the gym.

The Cobras went undefeated, and Clarke's youngest son, Chiefy, was a star player. The team went all the way to the city championship.

School officials planned no pep rally the week before the big game. No one even seemed to notice the team's success. Clarke was furious. "They don't want to be bothered with the kids," Clarke says of school leaders. "They're just there for a paycheck."

On February 25, the Cobras lost to Paseo Middle School, 34-20.

Wainright left Don Bosco in 1999 after disagreements with a new program director. Over the next year, he divorced, became a single parent, and buried a brother and a sister. "Emotionally, I was drained," he says. "My vision was still there, but as far as my mental capacity, was I mentally prepared to take on a big project? No. But it didn't stop me from the focus of the children."

Wainright had been searching for a place to open his own community center. He'd inquired in the area of 43rd Street and Prospect, where vacant buildings stood on nearly every block. But bad credit prevented him from getting a loan, and with no partner for support, he'd been turned away again and again. "People didn't want to give," he says. "Why do we have all these vacant buildings around?"

Wainright kept running teams, though, at night hoops and in city leagues and at places such as the Guadalupe Center. He took on a part-time job at a Minute Circle Friendly House Community Center (which will be renovated to become a branch of the Boys and Girls Clubs). He also worked at the Kansas City Free Health Clinic as an HIV-prevention specialist.

He had thought about starting up a ministry for years, but he kept telling himself he was too busy. "You run from your calling," he says. "I guess I was tired of running from what was really needed."

After studying at the Destiny Life Center, Wainright was ordained in September 2002. He says there are many youth ministries in town, but he seeks a unique audience. "The people that we're searching for are the kids who are lost in the shuffle, dying for attention, dying for direction, wandering in the wilderness," Wainright says. "I want that kid up there talking about the Bloods, Crips, the 'hood. We can deal with them."

Three years ago, Wainright opened Heaven Sent Outreach Ministries out of his home in Raytown with his new wife, Cassandra. He opened his home to his players and tried to teach them the power of spirituality, the importance of excelling in academics and learning to deal with confused emotions. After those lessons, he would take them down to the courts and fields to play ball.

Around the same time, in August 2003, Wainright took a full-time job as site coordinator and counselor with Caring Communities at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School at 42nd Street and Indiana. By day, his job was to schedule activities that brought neighborhood residents to the school after hours. But on most evenings, Wainright coached boys 10 and older in various leagues inside the gym.

The summer he started at King Middle, Wainright and his wife returned to 43rd Street to renew his hunt for a building. The new focus was to offer sports and life lessons for kids, along with the word of God. Most of the boys in the neighborhood thought making it to 25 was a long life. They needed salvation fast.

Wainright looked at five abandoned buildings, but even when the owners had no prospective buyers, they refused to rent out the spaces. One of the buildings had stood vacant at 39th Street and Agnes for nearly 20 years.