By 2010, HYPE was hosting basketball camps with 400 kids, and the leagues possessed more than 700 kids. The bonding produced by camaraderie, inclusivity, sportsmanship, and teamwork-that’s what inspired Sayed.Īnd so, that small yet respectable basketball tournament in 2001 led to training camps and basketball, soccer, and volleyball camps, which eventually blossomed into a movement spanning 12 cities and a total of 21 schools and recreation centers. Let’s expose other people to what we were exposed to.” “It was one of those things where we would say, ‘Hey, let’s get together and. I realized that our differences were erased when we were on the field or on the court because we had one common goal…and that was to win,” Sayed says emphatically. If a 19-year-old Sayed had learned anything during his time at Dearborn’s Bryant Middle School, it was this: “ became my teammates-and then we became friends because we were teammates. Rather, it started quite simply with a three-on-three basketball tournament. Sure, today HYPE Athletics bears a resemblance to a burgeoning fitness company due to its two thriving locations-one in Wayne and one in Dearborn Heights. “We serve families and improve the quality of life through fitness, education, and sports,” says Sayed. We just didn’t click,” recalls Sayed.īut that invaluable experience ended up being a blessing in disguise because it charted the course which led Sayed precisely where he is today: the owner of HYPE Athletics Community, a deeply rooted, non-profit community-based organization that partners with federal, state, and local agencies to provide services and programs. “Going to that school was like participating in the musical West Side Story. I knew kids who shoveled snow in the winter to make a few dollars, cut some grass in the summer, and maybe delivered the newspaper. “My neighborhood was predominantly lower income. Due to overcrowding, Sayed was bussed to a different middle school-one across town in West Dearborn, a middle-to-upper-middle class community that was markedly more white-collar. The life Sayed came to know while residing with his family in East Dearborn differed greatly from the one he saw at school-these worlds weren’t one and the same.
“And I didn’t have that when I was a kid.”Īlthough Sayed attended school in West Dearborn, one would be mistaken to assume he was well off. “I wanted to be a doctor because I knew they made a lot of money,” explains Sayed. That’s what Ali Sayed, owner of HYPE Athletics, wanted to be when he grew up.
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