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Drive as far south as you can on Big Horn Blvd. Just past the Elk Grove Center of Cosumnes River College, the road dead ends. But just on your right is an impressive school campus. It’s the Fortune Early College High School and Middle School.
Started under the vision and direction of educational specialist Margaret Fortune many years ago, the Fortune school is ending its second school year at this seemingly-remote campus.
“When the school year started there were no houses out here at all,” Raphael Jemmott, the school’s Community Outreach director, observed.
Now, there are many new homes and residents in virtually all of them just to the west of the Fortune School’s eight-acre campus. Jemmott says it won’t be long before Big Horn is extended to Kemmerer Road to the south.
Walking around the immaculate campus, everything still looks brand spanking new. It even smells new. In the two-story main classroom building are around 200 middle schoolers and about 170 high school students. Classrooms look very planned out. Students are all wearing “uniforms” as are all staff members in the school colors of orange and blue.
Jemmott started our tour at the all-weather track and soccer field. Right now, the school fields teams in those two sports. They also have basketball and volleyball programs.
Nearby, we go into the gymnasium/locker room area where there is an elaborate weight room with about every kind of exercise machine and free weights. Everything is in its place and not a speck of dust exists. Just down the hall Jemmott quickly walks to midcourt of the basketball layout and there’s an impressive school logo. The Fortune School athletic teams are known as the Panthers. On the north wall is a large video board where pre-produced video clips and photos can be displayed. Imagine a miniature version of the scoreboard at Golden One Arena, that’s what they have here.
This past winter Fortune’s boys basketball team made it as far as the Sac-Joaquin Section’s Division V championship game. They lost to Ripon Christian. The Panthers head coach was Derek Swafford, best known for his outstanding teams at Sacramento High School for many years. Swafford made the move to Fortune School a few years ago to become its athletic director and help build a sports program.
After this past season Swafford decided he was done coaching basketball and hand the job to Jemmott, himself a former Sac High Dragon who played for Swafford.
Jemmott’s been building a bit of resume on his own. He spent two years coaching boys basketball at Valley. Last year he came over to join his mentor at Fortune and was on the bench this past year. Next season, Jemmott will inherit a team with plenty of talent and experience. Just two boys will graduate off last year’s squad.
“We’ve been slowly building (the sports program) up,” he said. “Basketball has been sort of our first sport to build on. This has been our third year having a varsity program.”
Being the Community Outreach director for the school, Jemmott speaks highly of the unique vision and purpose for this school.
“We are partnering with Cosumnes River College to try to open up some opportunities,” he said. “Our students can take some college courses along with their high school courses and graduate with up to two years of college, absolutely free.”
But this school goes far beyond that.
“Our school was dedicated to close the African-American achievement gap,” Jemmott said. “But, we are open to all students of all different backgrounds. We want to be a safe place for all students. We’re not a part of any school district. We have students coming from all over; Greenhaven, Natomas, Rancho, all over the place. We are giving them an option here. And, being a smaller school, everybody knows everybody.”
And, the Fortune School is tuition free, operating as a public charter school.
Green to transfer to Grant
The rumors had been flying for the past couple months around the high school football circuit that Sheldon’s talented running back Devin Green was looking to go to another school for his senior season. Green was not attending the off-season workouts after school, according to head coach Chris Nixon, and questions were being asked.
It started with an April 13 tweet by Thomas Downs, ironically, a former Sheldon football player, who works out with youth football players using the name, “DB Select.” The Tweet showed a photo of Green, listed offers from Cal, Oregon State, Arizona and Fresno State, with Down’s comment, “best overall back in Sacramento! Strong, patient, a great burst, can take it 80. It looks like he’s playing with children.”
But, Downs rated him as a three-star running back from Grant High School.
On April 28, Sheldon athletic director Jason Bumbaca told the Citiizen he was informed by Green’s parents they were transferring their son to Grant.
However, a video surfaced about that same time on social media which was emailed to the Citizen. The video showed two boys in what was identified to the Citizen by the source as being Grant student/athletes in a Pacer locker room holding a Sheldon t-shirt and beginning to tear it in two. A third boy, identified as Green came from behind to take the t-shirt away. The first boy commented, “We’ve got Devin Green.”
The Sac-Joaquin Section office had no comment at this time on this matter when contacted by the Citizen. The 2022-2023 school year is still underway, and Green is still a student at Sheldon.
Much more on this story, I am certain, as the 2023 football season nears.
Larson wins NASCAR All-Star Race
For the third time in his already-stellar racing career, Elk Grove’s NASCAR race car driver Kyle Larson won the annual “All-Star Race” and, with that, a cool $1 million payday.
His wife, Katelyn, celebrated afterwards by “shot gunning” down a beer on the track in front of cheering fans.
He joins Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon as a three-time winner of the event. Only Jimmy Johnson has won more All-Star Races with four.
The race was run Sunday at the North Wilkesboro Speedway, newly redesigned .625-mile oval, where NASCAR had not run since 1996. On Saturday, Larson also won the Craftsman Truck Series race on the same track.
On Sunday, Larson led 145 of the 200 laps.
By the way, earlier this month NASCAR named its top 75 drivers of all time to commemorate the 75 years of NASCAR-sanctioned racing. Larson was one of those 75 drivers selected.
American Legion Baseball
The Elk Grove American Post 233 Baseball team is open to players of the ages between 14 years to 19 years old for the 2023 regular season that will be played between June 1 and July 9. The regular season will consist of 10 games with other American Legion Posts in the area. Participation with the team is free to the players for the 10-game regular season and the Area Championship Tournament that will be played in Fairfield in July if the team does well in the regular season games.
The Head Coach/Manager of the team is Dave Pinckney who is a long time Elk Grove High School baseball coach. The General Manager/Team Coordinator is Dennis Barksdale of the Sons of the American Legion and owner of Claybar Engineering Inc. in Elk Grove.
All players interested in participating with the Elk Grove Post 233 American Legion
Baseball team should contact Dennis Barksdale by text at 916-207-9026 or by email at [email protected].
