Ted Ginn Sr. Built a School to Turn Boys Into Men | Everyday Heroes

On Cleveland's east side, a Hall of Fame football coach decided that winning games wasn't enough. Ted Ginn Sr., inducted into the inaugural class of the American High School Football Hall of Fame, had spent years watching what happened to young men when someone believed in them. So he built a place designed around that belief.

Ginn Academy, founded in Cleveland, Ohio, grew out of Ginn's work with players at Glenville High School. He saw that the discipline, accountability, and sense of purpose he instilled on the field could carry young men far beyond it—if those lessons were woven into their daily education. The Academy was built to do exactly that.

"Ginn Academy provides opportunities for students who may or may not know what their direction in life is," one administrator explained. "For young men that come to us that don't have a plan or a dream or a vision—Coach Ginn and the staff gives them one."

The school's mission, as Ginn describes it, is straightforward: "To create people, young men, to be productive in the world. It's the love and passion that you give them to be global leaders of the century, to be productive men and husbands and people."

That philosophy has produced measurable results. Cathy Denise Williams transferred her son Christopher to Ginn Academy when he was struggling. She remembers the moment Ginn looked at her and said, "Give him to me and I'll mold him into who he needs to be." Christopher went on to earn a scholarship to Notre Dame College and is now a sergeant in the U.S. Army.

Ginn is direct about what he believes education is missing. "If you don't have love, you have no passion," he said. "You don't get in problems and you don't get to know—that's nothing." His curriculum centers on the whole person, not just performance on a report card.

For Ginn, the reward isn't a trophy or a ranking. "The most fun part of it is the ability to influence, to mentor," he said. "You see a kid that really didn't have an idea that they could become whoever they can become. And then you see their parents, and they're hugging each other happy. That's the biggest joy."