A Colorado-based track team and the state’s oldest educational foundation have joined forces to help a Colorado Springs student afford college, according to a recent news release.

Coronado High School graduate William White IV will attend Vanderbilt University in the fall, thanks in large part to a $30,000 grant from Team Boss and the Sachs Foundation.

Team Boss is a group of more than a dozen professional runners, four of whom are competing in the Tokyo Olympic Games. The Sachs Foundation, founded in 1931 by Pikes Peak area resident Henry Sachs, has sent more than 3,000 Black students to college since its inception, including more than 60 current undergraduate and graduate students.

According to Team Boss co-founder Aisha Praught-Leer, the two groups were brought together by a shared interest in social justice.

In 2020, fueled by the social reckoning that followed the killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer, Praught-Leer and her teammates were looking for a way to use their talents to support the social justice movement.

“My coach and I talked about it, and decided we would create a race that was also a fundraiser,” she said. “He put me in charge of finding a cause that I was passionate about.”

In the course of her research, Praught-Leer learned about the Sachs Foundation, which has been sending Black Coloradans to college for nine decades.

“I cold emailed (foundation president Ben Ralston), introduced myself, and asked if he’d be willing to talk on the phone,” said Praught-Leer.

During her conversation with Ralston, Praught-Leer learned of a connection between the foundation and her sport: the first Sachs Foundation scholarship recipient had been a standout distance runner.

Dolphus Stroud, who once held the record for the fastest round-trip climb of Pikes Peak, qualified for the 1928 Olympic trials in Boston. When officials told him he could not ride the train with the white athletes, he walked and hitchhiked nearly 2,000 miles in 12 days, arriving in Boston with only six hours to spare before the trials. Exhaustion prevented him from realizing his Olympic dream, but with the help of a grant from the Sachs Foundation, he graduated cum laude from Colorado College. Stroud was the college’s first Black member of Phi Beta Kappa, the national academic honor society.

“When we learned about the foundation’s connection to Dolphus Stroud, it just seemed too good to be true,” said Praught-Leer.

Praught-Leer and her teammates created the Team Boss Colorado Mile, conducted at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction. It was essentially a group of training partners racing against each other, but the effort raised more than $30,000, Praught-Leer said.

Additionally, team member Emma Coburn won the race with a time of 4 minutes, 32 seconds — the fastest mile ever run by a woman in Colorado, besting the previous record of 4 minutes, 36 seconds.

“Actually, the top three finishers all broke the record,” said Praught-Leer, who finished fourth. “I just missed it.”

The team donated the funds to the Sachs Foundation, which didn’t have much trouble finding a suitable candidate for the Team Boss Scholarship.

A National Honor Society member and former captain of Coronado’s track, basketball, and tennis teams, William White IV said he was thrilled when he learned he had received the scholarship.

“It’s a great opportunity for young people of color,” said White, who hopes to become an orthopedic surgeon. “Even if we do get into, say, Harvard or Yale or Vanderbilt, a lot of the time we can’t afford to go there.”

Black students are more likely to drop out of college for financial reasons, and those who do graduate tend to be saddled with more debt than their white peers, according to Ralston.

“There are a lot of factors set up in higher education that have made it difficult for students of color, and Black students in particular, to receive higher education with the same opportunities that white students do,” Ralston said. “We’re proud that we are able to help Black students afford college.”

While she is proud of her team’s fundraising effort and excited about White’s future, Praught-Leer is currently focused on more immediate matters — like trying to run 1,500 meters fast enough to garner an Olympic medal in Tokyo. Still, she and her teammates hope to conduct additional fundraisers in the future.

“It’s something that we hope to continue, if not this year, then in the coming years,” Praught-Leer said.

Black students from Colorado received $2.44 million in scholarships from Springs-based foundation over the past year