Dreamstime
For much of his life, Ty Cobb has been flying high, not unlike early twentieth-century baseball legend Ty Cobb, also famous for sliding into bases with his spikes high. But unlike his namesake, Memphis’ contemporary Ty Cobb (no relation) has his feet firmly planted on the ground.
While an Ole Miss cheerleader, this St. Louis native created the Dixie Daredevils (later the Bud Light Daredevils), the gravity-defying, airborne dunking teams that entertained basketball fans in 385 cities in 50 states and 23 countries.
Cobb was living the good life and making more money than he had ever imagined earning, but he realized it wasn’t enough. He had been volunteering at urban gymnasiums and reached a decision: He could turn what he learned as a dunking daredevil in gyms around the world and use it to dare young people to participate in a program to give their lives better odds for success.
To begin, the 57-year-old Cobb created an app to support his idea, which he called Corefire Leadership Training. His aim was to help young people tell their own stories, but he realized in time that it fell short. “They need our help to have better stories to tell,” he says.
His app created a social network so youths could create “digital resumes and portfolios” that would help them apply for jobs and college. “As the student makes an effort to participate in activities and volunteer for programs, they are building their resumes and aren’t just depending on an ACT score to explain who they are,” Cobb says, adding that students in “tough neighborhoods” are ground down by the realities of their lives. “Coaches make sure they are motivated and excited and show them their futures are not already written.”
The same energy that led him to launch himself into the air toward basketball goals is evident as he talks about the improved version of his app, called CoreRocka. He says it is “experiential entertainment competitions that are designed to entertain, energize, and engage students and adults to ignite a passion for personal growth.”
The app can be used to organize volunteers, track progress, and provide incentives with prizes and competitions, Cobb says. To make sure all this is fun, there’s a comic book and trading cards personalized for students. “We believe the only thing more powerful than a good story is the chance to become part of that story, and we are using the enthusiasm for that as a catalyst for life-changing learning opportunities,” he says.
The search and rescue themes in the comic books are translated into on-the-ground competitions that can be held online or in gyms or other large rooms. It brings together teams of up to 12 participants who work for 90 minutes at tasks relying on team building, mental tests, and development of logical plans for achieving a goal.
While from the outside it looks like fun and games for students, that’s not what motivated Cobb to shift the direction of his life. Rather, it was having a fuller — and more personal — understanding of the challenges facing so many of Memphis’ youth. While poverty rates for the U.S. were taking a downward turn, the poverty rate for children in Memphis increased — from 43 percent in 2015 to 44.7 percent a year later. Meanwhile, Memphis has the highest proportion of opportunity youth of any city in the U.S. with 45,000 young people. To top it off, a child born into the bottom 20 percent in income has the worst odds of moving to the top 20 percent of any major city in the U.S. — just 2.6 percent.
When these statistics are combined with the fact that Memphis has a larger percentage of its population under 18 than many cities, it takes on even more meaning. For example, 26 percent of the Memphis population is younger than 18, compared to 21.7 percent in Nashville, 22.2 percent in Austin, 21.5 percent in Baltimore, and 21.1 percent in St. Louis. In other words, while Memphis and Nashville have roughly the same total population, Memphis has 26,500 more children.
“Ultimately, the aim of our training is to create a network of support that is too often missing for inner city students,” says Cobb. “With this program, one staff person can touch a dozen kids. It was tested at Kroc Center where we touched 20,000 kids. What we’ve learned is that it is scalable and it can go into schools to create more touchpoints and greater success.”
From Cobb’s perspective, getting more young people firmly grounded in ambition and results is what ultimately allows them to soar as daredevils in their own lives.
