by Laura Glesby
The ball nearly goes out of bounds at a Martinez vs. Hill Central match.
To Anahy Nophal, an internship at New Haven Counts didn’t just mean coaching kids through math problems and soccer games. It meant helping them grow as whole people — in and out of the classroom, on and off of the field.
On Friday afternoon at Chatham Park in Fair Haven, Nophal watched as kids from across New Haven readied for the New Haven Counts Empower League playoffs, a culmination of a year of competitive soccer paired with math tutoring.
Mayor Justin Elicker, Supt. Madeline Negrón, Fair Haven Alder Frank Redente, and Community Services Administrator Eliza Halsey convened a press conference to celebrate New Haven Counts and other academic support programs under the New Haven Tutoring Initiative just before the playoffs began that afternoon.
The program originated as a response to academic lags during the Covid-19 pandemic. Initially funded by federal pandemic relief via the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the city is funding the program through municipal general fund dollars for the first time in the upcoming fiscal year: a $1 million allocation that supports training, coordinating, and supervising volunteer tutors.
The city contracts with numerous local community organizations to host the tutors, with United Way, New Haven Reads, LEAP, and New Haven Counts leading the collaboration.
As a whole, according to Elicker, the New Haven Tutoring Initiative serves 2,900 New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) students this year and 7,500 students in total over the past three years.
This year, the New Haven Tutoring Initiative supported the growth of New Haven Counts’ new Empower League, a soccer league of about 200 elementary and middle schoolers who receive math tutoring while also participating in the organization’s competitive inter-school soccer league.
Emiliano is a striker on the joint Fair Haven School/FAME team. Being a striker involves “doing a lot of things at the same time,” he said.
FAME sixth-grader Emiliano said he’s participated in the program for three months. “I heard about this from my friend, and I came here, ‘cause it sounded fun,” he said. He’s enjoyed it so far; he said he’s noticed improvement in both his “math skills” and his “soccer skills.” The program “can develop a lot of things” for students, he said.
Noting the combination of athletic opportunities and math education program, Negrón called the program “a wonderful example of holistic development” at Friday’s press conference.
Negrón said that she sees the impact of the tutoring initiative in students’ academic growth assessments. According to New Haven Counts’ 2025 annual report, “Since 2024, NHC students averaged 1.5–1.9 years of measurable growth within just one academic year.”
Redente said that in his work at Fair Haven School, where many kids participate in the program, “I’ve seen firsthand how the engagement in athletics and academics has impacted these young men.”
“When kids are in the classroom or out on the field, they are needing resilience,” noted New Haven Counts co-founder Dan Hicks.
“Our coaches do a really great job of not only getting the kids out here, competing and having fun, but also bringing the math back,” Hicks said. “If you talk to some of the kids who are on the field and very invested, they probably know their statistics for the passes they’re making” or “how many goals they’ve had.”
New Haven Counts co-founders Dan Hicks and Ron Coleman with the trophy that will bear the name of the winning teams this year and in years to come.
New Haven Counts Lead Intern Anahy Nophal, a soon-to-graduate senior at Wilbur Cross High School, said she also sees a connection between the students’ math skill-building and the athletic improvement.
She watches her students “problem solving” both in their homework and on the soccer field. Oftentimes, in soccer, they have to draw on their training to make split-second decisions — mirroring the “fact fluency” she sees them developing in their math tutoring sessions.
“I’ve always known I wanted to be a teacher since I was little,” said Nophal, who is graduating from Cross’ Education Pathway program for aspiring educators. “I’m mostly interested in doing bilingual elementary education.” Having started out at New Haven Counts as a volunteer tutor to fulfill a community service requirement, Nophal is now the organization’s most senior intern.
For about 10 hours a week, she supervises kids in both sports and academic settings at a variety of schools, and she helps the program serve Spanish speakers. Next year, when she starts at Southern Connecticut State University, Nophal said she hopes to continue working at New Haven Counts.
“For me, it’s not really tutoring just for math. It’s also a lot of kids who go through rough patches,” she said. She’s learned to check in with the kids as people, to ask them how they are and assess how she can support them, before jumping into math problems. The best part, she said, is “earning the trust” of her students.
Officials gathered for a press conference before the playoffs began.