Ex-Ram athletic star comes home to pay it forward as part of new P.C. STEER student-athlete program
March 6, 2024 at 11:25 p.m.
Former Rams football and Track & Field star Jordan Lewis asks not for whom the bells toll. Not after having his bell rung so many times on the gridiron that he gave up the sport in college because of the concussions he endured as part of the game. And not because the toll rose beyond the sports arena in life lessons learned, from the death of a loved one to the depression that led to his putting on 50 pounds, dropping sports for a while and switching colleges and majors.
And yet those major events helped him become a sportswriter, broadcaster and television color commentator.
And through it all, Port Chester's STEER for Student Athletes was there for him.
Jordan Lewis, a 2018 Port Chester High School graduate, is now director of communications, social media, and marketing for STEER for Student Athletes.Jordan Lewis
Steering the right way
That's why Lewis has come full circle, coming home to be part of STEER to pay it forward. He wants to use his painfully hard-earned life experience to help local student-athletes navigate their way through their difficult high school and college years as well as their entrance into the post-graduate world.
STEER steers kids the right way by providing individualized mentorship, services, and financial support to ensure students thrive academically, develop socially and emotionally, and excel athletically. It strives to accomplish all that and more by working to remove obstacles that inhibit holistic student development and provides alternative positive support. This support allows program participants like Lewis to develop college and career readiness skills and personal competencies that will empower them to become positive contributors in a global society while improving family and community outcomes.
The 'at promise' outlook
Port Chester STEER students are 7th to 12th grade “at promise” student-athletes. The altruistic non-profit organization describes an at promise student-athlete as someone who, by virtue of their circumstance, may be exposed to risk factors but possess unique qualities and talents that contribute to positive development.
That "at promise" verbiage places a more positive spin on the initial description of what STEER at first called "at risk" student-athletes when it began working its magic at Port Chester High School in 2012. The program has now expanded to four other schools—The Barack Obama School for Social Justice (formerly Palisade Prep), The Charter School for Educational Excellence, Careers in Sports High School and Sleepy Hollow High School.
In that time, the program has evolved to the point "where we now expand our services to our kids once they graduate high school and beyond," said Dr. Joseph Durney, former Deputy Superintendent of Schools for the Port Chester School District and current STEER chief executive officer.
The pay it forward model
Jordan Lewis competes in the long jump as a Port Chester High School junior and qualifies for the state competition.Courtesy of Memorable Moments Photography
"We aim to have a pay-it-forward model where students return to us and can help in their communities," Durney said. "To that end, Jordan Lewis is working here full-time after graduating college. You may recall him as an outstanding student-athlete, football player, and track star. He has been with us since graduating from SUNY Cortland. He started as an intern and is now our director of communications, social media, and marketing. So now the story is coming full circle, and the STEER student-athlete who was in our program for six years is now back in his community, giving back."
It has been quite a journey for Jordan, filled with physical and emotional detours that help him bring his own strength, hope and experience to the program in a way that helps him relate to the student-athletes involved and vice vera.
Port Chester athletic background
Lewis, 24, was first recruited into the STEER program by Durney, a former coach, teacher and administrator with more than 30 years of educational experience in the Port Chester School District, and the late, great Middle School educator Byron ("it's all about the kids") Womack, a former Iona College football star. Lewis was in Middle School then and seemed already destined for greatness as a Ram.
Lewis wore the Port Chester varsity football uniform for the first time as a freshman running back who started for then Rams head coach Greg Domestico, only to get his bell rung in his first game against North Rockland. He wore the Rams varsity football jersey for the last time as a senior who scored four touchdowns—including a 60-yard pinball TD run through traffic—to clinch the Rams’ first league championship in what seemed like ages under Paul Santavicca who helped turn around a losing program.
Backfield for the ages
In between, lots happened including Lewis becoming part of the best Ram backfield in the past two decades. His career highlights included the day he and his three running mates—Jason Wiley and Shawn Blackburn all ran for more than 100 yards for the first time and quarterback Michael Boccarossa ran the show—against Horace Greeley. The Rams were back as a legitimate contender, no longer a league doormat. Those four Rams came back as seniors to win a revenge game against Spring Valley, the team that beat them for the league championship the year before, with each of the four horsemen scoring. That winning streak continued into the season finale that saw Lewis run for 150 yards and four TDs in the league championship game that resulted in his being named to the All-League team while receiving All-Section Honorable Mention.
Unfortunately, there were more concussions along the way for Jordan. But they didn't slow him down for long. Lewis was the Rams’ fastest sprinter (11.1 for the 100 meters), top relay runner and outstanding long jumper (21:11) on the T&F team. He seemed poised for college football stardom at Springfield College in Massachusetts when he reported for pre-season football practice in August 2018. That's where he really got his bell rung and took lots of hard hits on and off the field.
Sequence of sad events
His mother Dawn died of a brain aneurism, and he went into a downward spiral of grief, depression, despondency, despair. To fill the hole in his soul, he began overeating. He gained lots of pounds, but the hole was still there. He gave up on football and didn't feel like continuing working towards his Springfield degree in sports journalism. He came home to Inwood Avenue. His father and stepbrother helped get him back on track. So did his STEER mentors, among them Durney, then Port Chester's athletic director (Jordan still calls him Coach Durney) and ex-Ram basketball great Derek Vincent, STEER outreach coordinator.
Slowly, Jordan shed the weight, got his act back together and transferred to SUNY Cortland in August 2020. He enrolled in their communications studies program, quit football, began to write for the school newspaper (The Red Dragon Chronicle) covering basketball and T&F and did TV sports color commentary for the men’s and women's basketball teams. Eventually he hit the track again and returned to participating in T&F as a collegiate sprinter and long jumper. After graduation in May 2023, he came home to Port Chester and began working as an intern for STEER out of their 304 Midland Ave. office. And his role gradually evolved.
The new STEER role
Jordan became part of a video production team and helped capture footage from events the organization planned for student-athletes. He produced newsletters and graphics about STEER's summer activities. He interviewed members of STEER's Advisory Board and produced inspirational articles to share with STEER student-athletes. He took notes and gave feedback during organizational meetings about where the program was, where it is, and how to move forward. He even became a team leader at the Bruce Beck Sports Broadcasting Camp at Iona College in New Rochelle where he led a team of aspiring high school journalists and taught them the fundamentals of broadcasting.
Jordan Lewis rushes against Clarkstown North during the Port Chester Rams’ first round playoff game in the Fall of 2017.Courtesy of Jordan Lewis
But mostly he became involved with the STEER student-athletes, traveling from Port Chester to Yonkers to Tarrytown to the various schools, watching the games, getting to know the diverse student-athletes, talking with them from the vantage point of having walked their walk while still being young enough to relate to them because he had been there during his teens and tweens. He has lived the Hollywood script for what high school and college are like and seen the reality of it up close and personal while hearing the biblical bells toll for him instead of the school bells. Getting to know STEER from the ground up has helped him on and off the job.
The leading alum players
Now Lewis has stepped up to pay it forward alongside several other Port Chester alums working for STEER, including Montserrat Cardenas, former Lady Ram soccer and T&F STEER star, now student support administrator, grants and development, and Astrid Vargas, who graduated second in her high school class and received a grant to start the Lady Rams swim team as a student and is now director of alumni engagement. SUNY Purchase graduate Pat Durney, STEER chief operating officer (and CEO Joe Durney's son), has done impressive work helping immigrant families gain medical access while cutting through the bureaucratic red tape.
Lots of ex-Rams and Lady Rams have been coming back to address student-athletes and alums, including football's Melvin Molina (SUNY Cortland), Nani Velasquez (soccer, T&F, Ithaca), Rayder Sanchez (football, T&F, Fordham), Cecilia (Ceci) Martinez (soccer, SUNY Cortland) and Colin Taylor (soccer, T&F, Morrisville), who broke Lewis's best Ram T&F performances by running the 100 meters in 10:9 and long jumping a school record 23 feet last year.
$65Gs in scholarships
STEER has awarded more than $65,000 in college scholarships with last year's winners including Yelanni Diaz (soccer) who won for academics, Ariana da Silva and Isabella Farias (both soccer) for leadership, Daisy Ayavaca (soccer and T&F) for community service and Eric Coria (baseball) for advocacy. Exactly 18 students participated in the STEER STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Career Opportunity and Readiness Program, receiving either a $1,000 scholarship or a MacBook Air for their completion of the program. And as part of community outreach, 22 Port Chester and Sleepy Hollow STEER student-athletes continued their work to fight hunger this past summer by tending to a community garden and organizing food drives for needy local residents while participating in educational workshops through the STEER Lead4Change curriculum. Each of them has received the help they need, from after school academic tutoring to filling out their college application, from learning to speak, read and write English like senior basketball star Guillermo (Memo) Zabala did, to exploring broadcasting techniques as sophomore Skylar Sams (volleyball, bowling, basketball) has.
It goes well beyond that, with 16 STEER advisors—including sports coaches like Danny Alvarado, Joe Facciola, Amanda Manu, Jenna Lividini and Jeanine Maiolini—serving as mentors and STEER doing lots of unnoticed acts of kindness for the needy like buying cleats, spikes, baseball gloves and more including subsidizing travel team expenses, even buying a bike for a kid who lives too far from campus to walk.
So STEER is living up to its stated goal "to achieve better personal, social, and educational outcomes within STEER communities. Through our individualized support of student-athletes, we aim to ensure high school graduation and provide college and career readiness opportunities. Students are engaged in our program until high school graduation but remain active members of our organization after college."
Jordan Lewis is the latest example of alumni coming back to pay it forward. And this new part of his STEER journey has just begun.
For STEER, that journey began when two wealthy Rye entrepreneurs, financial whiz Michael Eck, a former University of Virginia quarterback, and building magnate Kevin O'Callaghan, a former Bryam Hills High School Athletic Hall of Famer, walked into Durney's office with an idea to change the world one student at a time. They pitched starting a student-athlete educational aid program for needy kids who deserved a break. Durney listened. And agreed. And that's how STEER started in Port Chester more than a decade ago. Lots of bells have tolled since then. Life has happened. Until it hasn't. But the beat goes on. And the rest is STEER history, which is still being made. One student-athlete at a time.
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