BREAKING THE “BROKEN RECORD”

PEOPLE If the Carter High School football players convicted of armed robbery last year could have known DAVID WINDHAM, they might be starring in the college ranks, not wasting years behind bars. For almost a year now, Wind-ham, a former New England Patriots player, has been conducting one-on-one counseling sessions with Carter players trying to nip behavioral problems in the bud.

“I’m trying to avoid the old broken record that keeps repeating itself” in so many kids1 lives, Windham says. “If I coulda, shoulda, woulda- that’s what we say in the end.”

Windham, a counselor at Dallas County Youth Village, a boarding home for expelled high school students, had kept up with the Carter story. But it was an incident at a shopping mall near Carter High last fall that made him decide to get involved.

After school one day, several Carter High girls were strolling the mall draped in their boyfriends’ varsity football letter jackets. Some girls from a rival school began laughing and taunting them: “Hey, are the guys who own those jackets in prison?” one of the girls shouted. The gibe hurt the girls and Windham as well.

During his post-workout or in-home “rap” sessions, Wind-ham, an honor graduate from Jackson State University, stresses the importance of education over athletics. “It’s a crusade of mine because we [his friends in high school] could have done some of the same things those kids did. If I reach one out often, I’ve done my job.”