Metropolis has Superman. Gotham City has Batman. Metro Atlanta has Brian Ball.
“My club helped me find my superpower,” he said during the Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s Southeast Youth of the Year event, held recently at the Georgia Aquarium. A graduate of the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology now studying film production at Georgia State University, Ball is the organization’s 2015/2016 Youth of the Year for Georgia.
“I want to focus on documentaries,” he said of his college plans and career ambitions. “I have a knack for storytelling.”
His own story is compelling enough for the screen. He was born two months premature and was raised by a single parent.
“Statistically, I am not supposed to succeed,” he said.
At 18, he’s logged a dozen years of club membership, and the experience has been transformational. He got involved with the organization’s Lawrenceville location as a youngster, about the time his parents divorced — “the point in my life that I thought was going to be my worst moment,” he recalled.
But the club was an empowering place that let him develop his strengths regardless of his circumstances.
“As a club member, I didn’t know I was poor,” he said. “At the Boys & Girls Club, I was just Brian. I had it hard but I know someone else who had it harder.”
Still, he had some growing up to do.
“Growing up, I subconsciously resented my mom,” he said. “I think part of that was blaming my parents’ divorce on her. It wasn’t her fault. I spent years just being unappreciative toward my sisters, my mom. I didn’t know I was doing that consciously.”
Then he landed a position at Camp Kiwanis, Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta’s 160-acre outdoor residence camp.
“I did so much. I rarely got a ‘thank you,’ I didn’t feel appreciated. I didn’t feel like anybody knew what I was doing,” he recalled. “When I talked to my family about it, they were like, ‘That’s what you’ve been doing to us.’ I didn’t want that feeling that I felt to be what my mom felt.”
He came to realize the impact he was having on campers, too, even if it was sometimes unspoken.
“During his last day at camp a few years back, he was searching for another camper who had gone missing and found him crying under his bunk,” Ball’s bio on the Boys & Girls Clubs site reads. “Brian was surprised to see this camper so distraught. The camper explained, ‘I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here. I love you guys.’”
The fundraiser at the Georgia Aquarium, sponsored by Disney, the University of Phoenix, Toyota and the Taco Bell Foundation, saluted 2016 Southeast Youth of the Year Raliyah Dawson of Vero Beach, Fla., and 2016 Southeast Military Youth of the Year Dorian Holnes of North Charleston, S.C.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice congratulated the youths via video tribute, and NBA Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins addressed the crowd and shared his own experience.
“That Boys & Girls Club saved my life,” the former Atlanta Hawks player said. “It created a safe haven for kids in my neighborhood. It gave me a chance to build character, to build courage. If I hadn’t had the people who believed in me at the Boys & Girls Club, I wouldn’t be standing here today.”
