YERINGTON -- Michael Sylvester is taking a visitor on a tour of the isolated Rite of Passage campus about 10 miles north of Yerington when he looks out over the almost football field-sized common area by the dorms.
"The grass is getting green," says Sylvester, walking tall and filling out his letterman's jacket the way a bison fills out its skin. "It's time for another season."
Whitish-yellow is a curious shade of green. The sun is out and for April 1 in Northern Nevada, it's a pretty nice day. But by anyone's standards, Sylvester's take on the grass is rosy.More than anything, the comment is indicative of the young man's outlook on life. He could have so easily become a victim of the streets, a child of a drug-addicted mother who lost his father at the age of 7 and for a short time when he was 15 lived alone in an abandoned house in Memphis. Between 8 and 15, he lived with relatives in six different states, and since he turned 14, he has moved at least 10 times.
Instead, with plenty of time to think about his life and his future while incarcerated in a Las Vegas juvenile detention facility, Sylvester chose a nobler path, and his journey has been nothing short of remarkable.
"He's a real good child," his aunt and guardian, Helen Grant, says from her apartment in Las Vegas. "I'm real happy for him, and I keep praying for him. ... He made a believer in me and definitely made a believer out of his family back home in Memphis."
Sylvester moved to Las Vegas three years ago after his mother lost custody of him when she left him in the abandoned house. Sylvester was alone at the house for about a week before his aunt called to say she had spoken to his mother who said she was in Detroit.
"I had no food," he says. "I was just at this house. It wasn't even our house. There's no rent being paid on this house, no lights in this house. It was a real low point in my life."
The change in setting didn't initially change Sylvester. He had also come to live with Grant right after his dad died.
"I think he was kind of traumatized by what happened with his mother," she says. "He was always depressed, always asking, 'Why does my life got to be like this?'"
Sylvester had a 1.20 GPA at Eldorado High his freshman year. He was arrested and placed in a juvenile detention facility. He did not want to talk about the offense, but ROP athletic director John Dibble said students who end up at ROP are "lightweight screw-ups."
"There are not any major offenders here," Dibble says of the all-male population of about 175. "Somebody (in the juvenile justice system) decided they needed to come here. We believe there's some good in these kids."
Since arriving at ROP in June of 2009, Sylvester has had a GPA of 3.57 his first semester and 4.0 in his second. At 6-foot-8 and 285 pounds, he was the Northern 2A lineman of the year last fall (he will likely be the Rams' only returning player next fall), and he was named to the 2A all-state team.
He has performed more than 500 hours of community service, much of that working caterings. He proudly wears his culinary arts pin on his letterman's jacket and plans to continue his education in culinary arts while majoring in business in college.
"We have some structure here," Dibble says, explaining Sylvester's about-face. "And we don't have a lot of distractions."
Sylvester's transformation has taken shape at ROP, but it began in that juvenile detention facility in Las Vegas.
Grant visited him in the detention center and often spoke about the Bible. On one such visit, Sylvester told her he wanted to turn his life around.
"He said, 'I don't want to live nothing of the street life no more,'" Grant says. "'I'm going to take this and use it as something good in my life.'"
Sylvester continues to draw inspiration from his family -- his biological family and his new family at ROP.
"I feel like every time I hit the trenches or practicing or training in the weight room, I feel they're with me," he says, referring to his father, Grant and other relatives. "They told me I could do it even when I thought I couldn't do it myself.
"I came here to change my life around. I had heard about the program and heard it was a good program. I thought I could put the effort into it, but I never thought I could put as much effort into it as I did. It's been extraordinary since I've been here."
