 |
 |
FUNDS AND GAMES: Veris, in Cardinal
play, above, and at Reunion Homecoming, top, raises
money to supplement his city’s $4 million
recreation budget.
Courtesy Cindy Pearson (top);
Courtesy Garin Veris (bottom)
|
Garin Veris, a former defensive end for the New England Patriots and the San Francisco 49ers, displays his old Stanford football helmet in his office. It’s covered with scrapes and smudges, the product of countless head butts from his days on the line with the Cardinal. These days, he is out to show that the playing field isn’t the only place athletes can use their heads.
As director of recreation for the City of Boston, Veris
raises money for youth athletic programs and encourages
young people to play sports to help them excel in all
aspects of life. He manages a $4 million annual budget,
which he supplements with public and private grants.
He oversees eight program managers and the employees
at the city’s 42 community centers and four stand-alone
swimming pools. Local advisory boards help the centers
tailor their programming. This can mean more soccer
in neighborhoods with many residents from Brazil, for
example, and more baseball in neighborhoods with ties
to the Dominican Republic. As the city’s head
cheerleader for recreation, Veris touts sports as a
way to fight obesity, learn discipline and respect,
and have fun.
Veris hopes to impress kids as much with his Stanford and Boston College Law School degrees as with his Super Bowl ring (earned in his rookie year playing for the Patriots in 1985). Growing up in Chillicothe, Ohio, he came home from school to do his homework before playing sports.
Yet combining athletics and coursework at Stanford
proved a challenge. “That first year was torture
on me,” Veris recalls. “You had to really
bear down and discipline yourself to get through a football
season and also the academic load Stanford offers.”
In the pros, he met players who had taken advantage
of college opportunities, but he also knew NFL players
who couldn’t read.
After seven years, his pro career was halted by knee
injuries. Veris went to law school and served a brief
stint as a sports agent. He had returned to Stanford
to work as a fund raiser when Boston mayor Tom Menino
tapped him for his current post.
“I love sports and I love what sports has done for me,” Veris says. “To pass that information on about how important sports and recreation are in kids’ lives and what it can mean later on, that’s what’s exciting to me. I’m an example of it.” |
