Tracy Small ’96

WRITTEN BY KRIS LIGHT

“I have an educator’s heart. That’s always been there.” This has been the through line in the career of Tracy Small ’96, founder and executive director of Denver-based Hands to the Future, a nonprofit dedicated to helping students achieve their dreams regardless of their immigration status. “Even before coming to Brewster, I knew I was an educator,” she says, adding with a laugh, “and I was very upset about it. I tried to become a lot of things that I knew I wasn’t.” In the end, there was no avoiding what she saw as her purpose in life.

Fortunately, it is Small’s perspective as an educator that has increased her impact in her field of refugee resettlement and in the lives of those she serves. After earning her Master’s of Arts degree in International Education-Conflict Management from the School of International Training: Graduate Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont, she explored career options. Rebuking multiple offers to become a case manager, Small shifted the focus of her work to education and skill development, providing job training and cultural orientation to refugee communities in the U.S. “People would ask me, ‘Why are you trying to teach them? We just need to check a box.’ And I would say, because this is generational cultural impact. If I teach this one, then they teach 10. Now those 10 people are asking how they can be more involved, how they can serve and lead their community. Now we can scale it. I’m not looking to serve 100. I’m looking to serve 1,000 or more, because it’s such a problem.”

Over the past 25 years, Small has worked in education, refugee resettlement, human trafficking, youth advocacy, and women’s empowerment. She has made it her mission, and that of Hands to the Future, to expand opportunities available to those of various backgrounds and all immigration statuses to complete their educational dreams, increasing the number of students from immigrant, refugee, or multicultural backgrounds completing college and master’s degrees, certificates, and licenses. She and her team connect Colorado-based students and their families to educational opportunities and provide college advising, leadership development, and resources to succeed in their pursuits. The numbers drive their mission: According to the Pew Research Center, only 26% of adults between 22 to 59 who do not have a college-educated parent have a bachelor’s degree. First-generation students are more than twice as likely to leave school within three years (33%) than students whose parents have a bachelor’s degree (14%). And only 48% of first-generation students are on track to graduate three years after enrollment, compared to about 66% of nonfirst generation students.

As A Bobcat

Small can easily connect her work today to her time at Brewster, where the spirit of creativity and structure gifted her opportunities for discovery. “You had leadership opportunities, and for the most part Brewster felt like a leadership academy. I was able to become curious about the world and unafraid to lead it. That has carried me the last 30 or so years. When I think about Brewster, I think That’s where I became a leader.” For her, this was a culture that flowed from the caring investment of the staff who nurtured these early sparks: the conversations around a dorm kitchen table…the walking talks spent processing and guiding. Small recalls often being advised that she was taking on too much, but she would push back, feeling like she could handle it. “They didn’t stop me. They supported me. They said ‘Let’s see how far you can go. We’re not going to cap your ability.’ And there were times I fell, and fell hard. And they were there, to catch me and help me understand limitations as something separate from my ability.”

Small says wise words from former Headmaster David Smith have stayed with her since her days on campus. “At All-School Meetings, Mr. Smith would say, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’ I think about that all the time,” she says. “Life changes. I start from square one today. It’s so important in the hard times and the happy. Seriously, that statement has changed my life. I used to make so much fun of it as a student, but of course, now it’s the thing that gets me through each day.”

EDITOR’S

NOTE: You can learn more about Tracy Small’s work and impact at hands2thefuture.org.

Leverett Ball ’11

WRITTEN BY MAURA SULLIVAN HILL

If you watch ESPN Plus, you might catch Leverett Ball ’11 announcing Boston University lacrosse games. Watching Ball conduct a post-game interview with one of the coaches, clad in a sharp gray suit and holding an ESPN microphone, you will see a confident, knowledgeable broadcaster, even under the pressures of live TV. What you won’t see is his hard-fought journey to work in sports broadcasting, manage ADHD, and overcome abuse in his childhood home. Ball has broadcast live from Gillette Stadium and the TD Garden, worked for the likes of NESN and WEEI Sports Radio Network, and has interviewed stars including Michael Strahan and the late Coolio on his podcast, The Lev & Marques Show.

Ball has come a long way from the Fall of 2008, when he arrived at Brewster with only the clothes he was wearing. He came to campus as a sophomore, on the recommendation of a family therapist who wanted to remove him from a traumatic home environment, where he described being abused by his mother, who suffers from mental illness. His home life was so chaotic that his suitcase and cell phone got left behind when he came up to New Hampshire, and it took some time to retrieve his belongings.

“I actually started stealing clothes out of the lost and found, because I had nothing to wear. I was the new kid with the name that was hard to pronounce and the clothes that didn’t fit,” Ball recalls. “A lot of the kids who go through stuff like that don’t even live to tell the tale. How do you go from being an absolute mess to being successful? The clear turning point in my life was going to Brewster. There were so many people who helped me, and Brewster helped me get on a better path.”

Ball’s mentors and teachers at Brewster helped him harness his skills and talents and manage his challenges. Janis Cornwell, was his first Instructional Support (IS) Teacher. “There were multiple reasons that I went to Brewster, but one issue was that I have ADHD and my learning style doesn’t really fit a classroom. And Brewster has a great Instructional Support program,” Ball says. “Everyone learns in different ways, and at multiple schools that I had gone to, my teachers didn’t understand that I learned differently. At Brewster, they taught me that it doesn’t mean you are stupid or lazy; you can have ADHD and still be intelligent. Ms. Cornwell helped me a lot.”

Cornwell called it a privilege to work with Ball, and fondly remembers his love of sports and how they would take time at the end of each trimester to reflect on his goals and progress.

“Leverett explored various systems to bolster his academic efforts and learned the value of leaning into the supports and structures offered here,” Cornwell says. “He was an intelligent, outside-of-the-box thinker who began to embrace his unique learning style to come into his own.”

Today, Ball uses what he discovered at Brewster about the best learning strategies for him to prepare for his TV broadcasts. He is more of an auditory than visual learner, so he reaches out to head coaches before games to do Zoom interviews with them to talk about the team and the upcoming matchup.

“Some people memorize stats and records. I learned that a conversational approach is best for me,” he says.

Ball was also grateful to former

Community

Residence Life Director Jaime Laurent, who helped him find a post-grad summer job with housing so he did not have to return to his difficult home environment. “It was going beyond her job description and was honestly a lifesaver for me,” Ball says.

Exercise and physical fitness were also lifesavers, giving Ball a healthy outlet for stress. It is a habit he still maintains today. “Physical fitness was really helpful for me, as someone who was very angry and confused and needed an outlet,” says Ball, who also played on the baseball team at Brewster. “It was something that helped me from a mental health standpoint.

“Brewster is a unique experience, and they hold you accountable,” he adds. “I will always be very grateful for my time there.”

Ball went on to play baseball for a year at Wittenberg University in Ohio, and then transferred to Curry College in Milton, Mass., where he played baseball for two years and graduated in 2016 with a degree in communications with a TV/radio emphasis.

Becoming A Broadcaster

When he first started out as a sports broadcaster, Ball would drive two hours each way to American International College in Springfield, Mass., to announce their basketball games—for free. The games weren’t even on TV; the school broadcast them over Facebook Live.

Ball jokes that maybe he can’t call it his first broadcasting job, since he didn’t get a paycheck. But his career grew from there, bolstered by the persistence that helped him succeed at Brewster.

“That was how I got my foot in the door. If you want to be a broadcaster, you have to have a very high tolerance for struggling and failing, because that’s just how the industry works,” he says. “I have to fight for my spot on ESPN every day.”

Ball lives in Arlington, Mass., now and his TV work currently focuses on New England pro and college sports, with appearances on ESPN for college lacrosse and NESN for the Massachusetts Pirates indoor football team. He does play-by-play commentary, as well as pre- and postgame analysis and interviews as a sideline reporter.

He also started his own sports podcast, The Leverett Ball Show, when he was bored during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and then pivoted that to an interview show hosted with former NFL player Marques Ogden. Ball met Ogden when he was a guest on The Leverett Ball Show, and they decided to team up for a new podcast. The Lev & Marques Show launched in May 2021, and they have put out more than 300 episodes, sometimes multiple per week, and have a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. The show focuses on the worlds of sports, business, and entertainment, and episodes cover everything from their thoughts on the NFL Draft to interviews with coaches, CEOs, or contestants from “The Bachelor” TV show.

“There are a lot of people in these really competitive industries—whether that’s professional athletes, movie stars, people who do what I do—who had traumatic childhoods. There are plenty of downsides to having a rough childhood, but it prepares you for these really hyper-competitive industries in a way that a comfortable childhood doesn’t,” Ball says. “Being comfortable being uncomfortable, whether it is going away to boarding school or living in employee housing at my job the summer after senior year, it prepared me for the lifestyle as a broadcaster, because it’s very, very uncomfortable.”

For Ball, part of living his life of purpose is sharing the personal challenges and adversity he has overcome, to hopefully inspire kids experiencing something similar.

“Very few people are comfortable talking about the worst experience in their life, or talking about it publicly, like I am. It’s not for everyone,” says Ball, who is grateful to his dad for sending him to Brewster when the situation at home became too difficult.

“But if you can own the worst thing that ever happened to you, that is incredibly empowering. That’s my advice for anyone.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find Leverett’s podcast, The Lev & Marques Show, wherever you download your podcasts. And follow Leverett on Twitter and Instagram at @Leverett_Ball12.