Young athletes
A clear-eyed look at complacency, misplaced trust, and the danger of foolish devotion to an institution or a team.
The Color of Black.
Subtitle: Beyond Ambition. A book for anyone who has been asked to shrink, and for the young athlete who still believes the jersey is the whole story.
From the foothills to the Big Sky.
Ezzard grew up on the island of St. Kitts and spent most of his childhood in Sandy Point. He grew up with three brothers, four sisters, a mother and a father. His father was a sharecropper who did subsistence farming on the foothills of the mountain, growing crops and rearing animals.
Throughout his childhood, while attending school, he worked on the farm to help support his family. He was a victim of child labor and suffered child abuse both in school and at home. He started working as early as two or three o’clock in the morning. He attended school from preschool through high school in Sandy Point. Those years in local school sport led to his success representing St. Kitts in athletics.
After graduating high school in 1973, he taught Grade 4 at Vanduyn Public School until his departure for the United States in August 1976, to attend Idaho State University. There he earned a B.S. in Biology (pre-med) with a minor in Physical Education, and later an M.S. in Environmental Science from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, with additional doctoral coursework in Education.
His athletic marks, in St. Kitts and in college track and field, will stand for years to come. The memoir is about what it cost to make them, and what it still costs young people who love a team more than they love their own future.
Who it is for.
Written for everyone. Aimed especially at middle school, high school, and college students, and the coaches, parents, and teachers walking beside them.
Students
A path from classroom to college that does not pretend the road is fair, only that it can still be walked.
Educators & families
A reminder that talent is not protection, and that ambition without awareness can be used against the very student it lifts.
The book asks readers to notice when loyalty becomes a trap, when prejudice and deceit still dominate the rooms where dreams are supposed to be safe, so they can branch out, keep their options, and refuse a smaller life.
Get your copy.
Hardcover, paperback, and digital editions are being prepared. Schools and youth programs may request classroom sets and speaking visits.
