Challenging the Center (Santa Fe Bobcats #6)(26)

“Why does the money have to come from kids?”

All three of the men turned to look at Kat, who had been sitting quietly at the end of the table. She’d been so silent, so unobtrusive—for once—Michael was ashamed to admit he’d forgotten she’d been in the room altogether.

“Excuse me?” Ted asked coldly. Michael shot him a warning glare, which Ted ignored.

“Well,” Kat said slowly, then stopped. “Mind if I move down there, or will I cramp your Boys Club style?”

Michael smothered a laugh in the palm of his hand, coughing to cover the lingering sounds. “Yeah, come on down. You didn’t have to sit all the way over there to start with.”

“Didn’t want to intrude,” she said shortly, taking a seat beside his attorney.

Why wouldn’t she sit next to me?

And that’s what a third grader with a crush thinks in the lunch room. Grow up, Lambert.

“It seems to me,” Kat said again, looking a little uncertain, “that an athlete with Michael’s clout would have some sway with businesses. Wouldn’t he? Kids get T-shirts and stuff at camp. Other gear. Why wouldn’t a business make a donation each year to keep the camp running in exchange for the free promo space?”

“We already nixed that idea,” Michael said gently, cutting Ted off at the knees before he made an ass out of himself. The man was brilliant, but ruthless everywhere. Not just the boardroom. “We don’t want to commercialize the camp. Some stuff is probably unavoidable—banners in the facility we rent out, that sort of thing—but we want to avoid going the way of corporate sponsorship as much as possible. Kids from these sort of backgrounds already feel the weight of charity pressing in on them. We don’t want more than necessary to add to that.”

“Oh.” She bit her bottom lip, blushing a little. If he were a betting man, he’d guess she’d psyched herself up to make the suggestion in the first place. He hated shutting it down.

“You see? There’s no other option.” Ted sat back, smug in his rightness.

“Sponsorships,” Kat said.

“You just heard him say—”

“Player sponsorships,” Kat interrupted Ted’s statement. “Bobcats who basically take on a few players and then come to the camp as a coach. One kid equals two fifty, you want to sponsor four, so you write a check for a thousand. But the catch is, you have to then show up and meet the kids you sponsored. And there’s no giveback. No pat on the back, no place where your name appears as a ‘donor’ in the program or on a banner. You’re a coach, period.”

Michael leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers steepled in front of him. He didn’t want to give her false hope, but he liked where this was headed. “Keep going.”

“But she—” Ted started.

“Shut up, Teddy,” Michael said mildly.

His friend and partner sighed and let his expensive pen drop to the table. “Whatever,” he muttered, swiveling around in his chair.

“Ignore the ass in the corner. Keep going,” Michael encouraged. He noted from the corner of his eye, Martin was also paying attention. A good sign.

“A lot of times,” Kat said, looking bolder with his encouragement, “money isn’t the problem. People will write a check just to make the begging stop. The real problem is the energy it takes to run something like this. It’s face time with people that inspire. Anyone can make a donation. Who is going to show up and put their face on the line? Their time and energy?”

“Yes, but—”

Michael reached out and put his hand over Ted’s face, smothering whatever his friend had been about to say. “Keep going.”

Kat glanced quickly toward Martin, who nodded as well. Bolder, she took a deep breath. “You mentor. It’s what you do. You’ve shown me that, and I’ve seen you talk about it. So this camp… It’s an offshoot of the mentoring thing. Catching them young. Right?”

He nodded, not wanting to break her stream of thought.

“Why not give the baby Bobcats a chance to practice mentoring themselves? You learn best by teaching, right? So if they’re provided the opportunity to mentor—and there’s a buy-in—then maybe they’ll catch the giving-back bug faster.”

“I love it,” Martin said, writing furiously.

“Why the buy-in for specific kids?” Michael asked, interested. “Why not just make them write a check to participate?”

“Because everyone does better with some skin in the game. But what’s more, when the kids show up, they get grouped together with the player that silently sponsored them. They form their own little team. Maybe they name their team, create a shirt or a flag or something to represent themselves while they’re at camp for those days.” Kat’s smile blossomed, and it was one of the most gorgeous things he’d ever seen. Her joy radiated. “One of the best memories of my life is when my parents sent me to a sleepaway camp at a university a few hours away. Middle school, so I was about thirteen. The coaches were the university’s men’s and women’s tennis teams, so they were anywhere from ages eighteen to twenty-three. We were divided up into teams, with a coach. For five days we basically lived together, practiced together, bonded. That coach became like our den mother, our big sister, our aunt, our war general. We worshipped her. If she called me up right now and talked to me, I’d drop everything to listen to what she had to say because of that bond.”