Wesleyan University appears as a destination in the athletic and educational world that briefly opened around Rob Peace and his teammates. The team’s second-place finish there, after winning its first tournament at Lawrenceville, showed that the St. Benedict’s boys could enter privileged collegiate spaces, compete successfully, and carry their Newark identity with them rather than leave it at the pool entrance.

A Tournament on the Team’s Rising Circuit

Wesleyan University was one stop in the water-polo team’s demanding junior-year schedule in the fall of 1996. The players had already won their opening tournament at Lawrenceville, near Princeton, and they came in second at Wesleyan. Their season eventually brought them within two victories of the Mid-Atlantic championship, making the Wesleyan result part of a sustained record rather than an isolated success.

The St. Benedict’s Team

Rob played in the hole, a physically punishing position comparable to power forward in basketball, while serving as the swim team’s lead butterflyer. He used his barrel-chested strength and endurance to absorb defenders’ underwater attacks, receive passes, shoot, or distribute the ball to Julius “Flowy” Starkes and Hrvoje Dundovic on the wings. Tavarus Hester covered the width of the pool on defense, and Drew Jemison played in goal. The team’s aggression, speed, and competitive swagger were treated as part of its identity as inner-city boys entering the pools of more privileged schools.

The players’ performance at Wesleyan also belonged to a larger collective discipline. During the week, they practiced until after six, watched game film at Coach Ridley’s house until eight, and studied at Curtis Gamble’s home until ten. On tournament trips they drank, smoked, listened to music, and played spades late into the night, then returned to the pool and competed intensely the next day. The contrast between recreation, exhaustion, study, and performance made the season a compressed rehearsal for the pressures beyond school.

Athletic Success and Educational Possibility

The Wesleyan result coincided with a period when the team’s athletic achievements began to suggest futures outside St. Benedict’s. Julius “Flowy” Starkes was later selected to the All-Regional First Team, and a referee told him that connections might place him on a path toward a scholarship at UMass. At school, the players began working with college guidance counselors; even Tavarus Hester had raised his grade-point average from 0.7 to 2.1 in two years.

For Rob, Wesleyan represented the kind of institutionally elevated setting that his education and athletic leadership were making reachable. His counselor told him to apply wherever he wanted, supported by strong grades, leadership accolades, and a combined SAT score of 1510 out of 1600, in the ninety-ninth percentile. At that point he was considering Seton Hall University, close to his home and Jackie Peace, but the broader college landscape was already visible through the team’s travel to campuses such as Wesleyan.

Place in Rob’s Trajectory

Wesleyan University therefore functions less as a residence than as a threshold: a collegiate campus temporarily occupied by boys whose lives were rooted in Newark and whose school sought to prepare them for movement beyond it. The tournament’s second-place finish affirmed their competence, but it did not erase the economic realities that shaped their choices. Julius “Flowy” Starkes worried about how college could be financed; Rob and Oswaldo Gutierrez thought about the obligation to provide for their families after graduation; and different postsecondary paths carried different combinations of debt, status, and immediate security.

The campus is consequently linked to the book’s recurring tension between educational mobility and the circumstances surrounding it. Wesleyan was a place where Rob and his teammates could demonstrate excellence, but the opportunity was embedded in a demanding system of travel, training, study, family responsibility, and unequal access. Its importance lies in showing the boys already crossing a social boundary while still carrying the pressures that made crossing it precarious.