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Building Baseball
Harold Mendez '96 wants to young Dominican Republic baseball players realize their dreams

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Harold Mendez '96 came to UNH with a major-league dream but quickly realized baseball was more a business than sport. Now he aims to help young ballplayers in a poor Caribbean country realize their own dreams by opening the Dominican Republic Sports and Education Academy to give promising athletes a better shot at landing college scholarships in the United States.


Harold Mendez '96

Mendez hopes to have the nonprofit facility up and running within the next one to two years.

Mendez, an American born to Colombian parents, runs Estrella Management International in New York City, a sports and entertainment management company that focuses on Latino talent. He came to UNH in 1992 on an academic scholarship and hoped to further his athletic career on the baseball team. But once he heard that he would need further development before making the team, Mendez realized his future might be better served off the field.

"I realized baseball was a business, and even at the college level, the main focus is to win," Mendez says. "It made me step back and wonder about the entire process of recruitment."

He'd long thought of creating an academy for promising Latino athletes that would foster the best in their athletic and academic sides, an all-encompassing prep school to ready them for college ball and the hope of a career beyond. He and a friend and business associate, Charles Farrell, who would become his partner in the academy, were talking about it one day when Mendez says if he won the lottery, he'd open such a facility.

"Charles says 'Why wait? Why not do it now?'" Mendez asked. "He suggested putting together a business plan, which I had already, and pitch it to people."

Mendez landed some investors and the promise of 25 acres from a resort developer in La Romana, on the other side of the Dominican from the capital of Santa Domingo. The academy is patterned after one in Puerto Rico that has had a good success rate in getting ballplayers there into U.S. colleges and universities, and would encompass equal parts sports and academic training. Part of the training includes teaching life skills for pro players, such as coping with the media and money management.

The desire to bring an academy like it to fruition had its roots at UNH.


Dominican Republic Sports and Education Academy

"It was a meeting with Dr. Stephen Hardy of the Sports Studies Department that lead me to bring together my experience and interest and focus it towards the international sports arena," Mendez says. "While developing a keen understanding of the historical significance and business side of the sports industry, I also longed to make my education a global one and turned to the International Relations Program for a dual major."

The academy is in the midst of a fund-raising campaign to raise the $25 million Mendez says is necessary to open and run the academy. They hope for ground-breaking in late-2010 despite the economic and social impact the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010 is having on the Dominican Republic.

They have started a Reading Program, where volunteers with the help of Children International read to young people in the poorest regions of the country. They hope that many will be inspired as a result to further their education.

For more information on Mendez's project in the Dominican Republic, visit www.drsea.org. ~


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