Charlotte Greeks ‘step’ up to mentor

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The power of a college education was on display in Charlotte’s Belmont neighborhood Saturday, punctuated by the rhythmic stomps and claps of fraternity and sorority step teams.

More than a dozen teams from the Carolinas and beyond taught routines to kids from area Salvation Army Boys & Girls Clubs – and urged the kids to prepare for college.

“If you like to write or draw, there are scholarships for that,” Norfolk State University senior Oneida Bradford told a group of girls. “There’s even a scholarship you can get just for being left-handed.”

The event at the Belmont Boys & Girls Club showed more than 50 kids the fun of “stepping,” a mix of foot movements, hand clapping and chanting by historically African-American fraternities and sororities.

Teams from UNC Chapel Hill, N.C. A&T State University and other schools were in town for Saturday night’s Sprite Step Off competition at the Grady Cole Center.

But before they hit the stage at Grady Cole, teams made a stop at the Belmont gym to preach the virtues of stepping and studying.

“You got it!” N.C. A&T senior Tyler Newkirk told 17-year-old Cordearo Stinson, a 10th-grader at Mooresville High School. The teenager had just learned a step-stomp-clap move and was beginning to feel a part of Newkirk’s Phi Eta Sigma team.

Newkirk was 11 when his parents split up. He was mostly raised by his mom and feels it’s important to help mentor other kids who don’t have strong male role models.

“I would love to be that person who said that one little thing that changed a kid’s life,” Newkirk said.

As for Stinson, he said he wants to study harder in school so he can go to college, join a step team and become an architect.

Thirteen-year-old Rachel Buckner also wants to be a stepper in college.

“You can express yourself by stepping,” said Rachel, a sixth-grader at Bailey Middle School in Cornelius. “You can be angry, but you’re stepping it out.”

The younger kids got free books, and the local Boys & Girls Clubs got a $4,500 donation from Step Off sponsor Sprite.

But for kids like Stinson and Rachel, what they really got Saturday was a look at a world they hadn’t seen before. A world of college kids having fun, helping others and telling them that they could do it, too.

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