Good Works: Top youth sets sights on college

“Speech?” Raymone Posey thought.

“I’m supposed to give a speech?”

Yep. That was part of the Boys and Girls Clubs Youth of the Year program. That was one reason that volunteer coaches were gathered in front of him in October, to hear his speech and then help groom him and other teenagers for the metro Atlanta competition with members from 22 other clubs.

He had been told to ready a speech, but somewhere between classes at Marietta High School, field trips and coaching the club’s younger members, attending his College Bound group and starting a peer-mentoring group, that whole speech thing had slipped his mind.

“Just do it from the heart. If you try to make something up, it won’t sound natural,” Kristine Pruss, director of the Franklin Road Boys & Girls Club where Posey is a member, told him.

Posey, 16, was in the yearly contest hoping to win some scholarship money, and it was too late to back out.

So he talked about his life at the club and his preparation, or lack of same, for the competition.

“They were very impressed,” he said of the judges.

They must have been. Posey, with his litany of good works and his extemporization, went on to win the title of Metro Atlanta Youth of the Year. He collected a $5,000 scholarship and plans to be the first person in his family to graduate from college.

He is in line to compete in the state competition early next year. If he wins there, he will go to the national Youth of the Year event.

That is quite an accomplishment for a young man whose first idea of joining the Boys and Girls Club on Franklin Road two years ago was to play a little basketball and hang with some friends.

He saw a couple of pals shooting hoops, and he joined them.

A rapping on a window attracted his attention a few minutes into the game. It was club director Pruss. She motioned him to come in and gave him a club application to fill out. It turned out well for both of them.

Posey brought a lot of untapped energy and leadership. He helped with peers and the younger kids responded to his help and direction.

“When I first got here they weren’t, umm, bad,” Posey said. “They were just kids.”

And he figured getting his peers to form relationships with the younger kids could be a good thing. So he began introducing the older club members to the younger children.

“I was hoping it could just help,” he said. “Even if a teenager is not doing everything they should be doing, they can still give them a positive word,” he said.

It was that kind of leadership that convinced Pruss that Posey ought to try for the Youth of the Year competition.

“Raymone has the ability to overcome a lot of obstacles,” she said. “He’s had a lot of adversity. But his strong will to keep on going and trying and putting effort into something really stands out.”