Students Look 'Way Up' to this School Staffer

Boys & Girls Village children look up – way up to agency’s school behaviorist, and hoop star 

Boys & Girls Village Day School staffer Ivoree Stanley skies over the opposition en route to a dunk in a recent men’s league game in Milford.

However, one thing has not changed: Ivoree Stanley, the Village’s star player and league leading scorer for two years in a row still rattles the rim and backboard at the Parson’s  Complex gym with dunks that rival the best in the region. 

For Stanley, it is business as usual when he dons the Boys & Girls Village jersey, where he’s been wowing fans and opposing teams alike with powerful, sweeping dunks off skyscraping leaps over beleaguered foes.   

It’s been three years since Stanley led the underdog Boys & Girls Village team to the Milford city championship in 2005 against perennial powerhouse Lynch Law Firm, this year’s league champion. The Village’s championship was won in front of an appreciative crowd that included dozens of at-risk children living in the Safe Haven and Kids I.N.N. homes in Milford. 

Chris Watts, a Milford native and St. Joseph’s High School and Providence College star who played on the losing team that year, remembers the shrieks of joy that came from the Village children who witnessed that close victory. “Sure, it hurt to lose. But if we had to lose to someone, I was glad it was to the Village,” Watts said. 

Stanley remembers that victory, too. “I love it when the Village kids come watch us play because I know that they have fun. Just to see our kids there cheering us on gives me all the satisfaction that I need. And when we won the championship, it was just unbelievable! All the kids were there and they really gave us a home court advantage. It made me feel like I was back at Quinnipiac again playing against our rival, Central Connecticut.” 

Even with the loss of several key players from the Village championship team since 2005, team manager and agency Development Director Chris Carroll notes, “Whenever Ivoree steps onto the court, the Village has a chance to win the game.” 

Boys & Girls Village, the Milford-based social service agency serving at-risk children and families since 1942, has sponsored a men’s team for four of the past five years in the Milford Men’s A League.  

Meanwhile, back at the Boys & Girls Village Day School, Stanley takes some time with student Deontae Boykin in Stanley’s office.

Today, Stanley is a lead behaviorist at the Boys & Girls Village Day School, a K-8 special education program located in Milford, where he works with at-risk students, all of whom pose a vastly different challenge than facing off against an opposing team’s center on the basketball court. 

“One of the biggest challenges is that every student here has a different issue affecting their ability to be successful in the classroom,” he noted. “So trying to figure out how to help each one can be challenging. Most of these students also go home and deal with some very difficult situations. So, often a student’s problems at home will carry over into school and that’s where I come in.” 

But challenges are nothing new to Stanley, who was required by NCAA rules to sit out a season after transferring to Quinnipiac. “My first varsity game as a sophomore at Quinnipiac was in November 1998 against UConn,” whose team that year included current NBA superstar Rip Hamilton, Jake Voskul, and Khalid el Amin – playing for a UConn team that won the NCAA Division I national championship later that same season. 

Quinnipiac lost that game to the eventual national champions. But by his senior year two years later, Stanley’s team won 18 games, and he averaged 13 points and 8 rebounds per game, being named the Northeast Conference Player of the week twice.  

Stanley, a marketing and advertising major, heard about Boys & Girls Village through a high school friend, and came to work as a shift supervisor in the Kids I.N.N. shelter homes in April 2003, recently marking his five-year anniversary at the agency. The Kids I.N.N. (Intensive Needs Network) home is a 16-bed psychiatric residential treatment facility serving boys and girls, ages 5-12, located in Milford.  

Recently, Stanley transferred from Kids I.N.N. to the Day School, and he was asked if his overall work with at-risk children has made a difference? “Some days it may not seem like it,” he admitted. “But overall, I definitely believe that I have made a difference. Every now and then, I will receive a phone call from a child who used to be a Boys & Girls Village client telling me how much they have learned and how they are trying to use the skills they learned at the Village in their daily lives today. 

“Every day remains a challenge,” he added. “And the solution that may have worked with a child one day won’t necessarily work the next day. You definitely have to think outside the box in order to reach these kids who have so many obstacles in their young lives.” 

How can the general public help? “The agency really benefits from public support of all kinds, whether it is monetary, food or clothing. All are greatly appreciated and go a long way for our kids and their families,” Stanley said. 

So, with the tenacity and dedication that he displays each and every time he steps on the basketball court, Ivoree Stanley takes it one day at a time with the at-risk children and students he works with at Boys & Girls Village. And while each day may not result in a “slam dunk,” it is the small victories – the converted lay-ups, if you will, that determine overall success. 

And by that measure, Stanley remains a champion and a role model, a tall one at that, in the eyes of the at-risk youth he works with every day.