SUQUAMISH, Wash. — Jaci McCormack knows what it takes to succeed in basketball. She was lucky enough to have the right mentors and family members to take her to the next level.
"When I stepped foot on Illinois State campus as an 18-year-old kid, I knew that I wanted to give back and I didn't know what that looked like," she said. "I didn't know what shape that would take, but I just knew that I had to show kids if I can do it, you can do it."
McCormack is the co-founder and CEO of Rise Above, a nonprofit that empowers Native youth to live happy, holistic lives.
"Rise Above is an organization that, at the end of the day, I believe provides hope for Native American youth," she said.
McCormack co-founded Rise Above with Brad Meyers. The two are servant leaders with decades of experience working Native youth.
"We use sport primarily as a modality, but at the end of the day, we're focused on prevention, early intervention, and mental wellness for kids," McCormack said.
The program provides basketball clinics, but also focuses heavily on mental health awareness. Suicide was the second-leading cause of death in the Native American community in 2022 in ages 10-34, according to the CDC, behind unintentional injury. McCormack has each kid at her clinics promise they'll find one person to talk to if they're in crisis.
"Not only do I make them promise, but I make them promise that they're going to find one person and the hope is really, how can that make a long-term impact, a long-lasting impact, where if they are in that space of self-harm, self-doubt, that they can think about a promise that they made at the Rise Above camp," she said.
Promises and partnerships. The Seattle Storm is the newest Rise Above partner, thanks to their "Together We Rise," community hoops series.
"It's really about making sure that we're able to break down access barriers and go into communities and provide free basketball programming, mental health resources, etc. in communities that might have barriers to access," Seattle Storm Senior Coordinator of Partnership and Community Services Katie Berger said.
McCormack said the partnership brings legitimacy to her organization.
"I think the Storm partnership and coming together and having the same values of impacting kids in communities and uplifting just has been a natural fit for the both of us," she said. "They come into a tribal community and they understand a tribal community a little better. So, it's a lot of education and lot of learning, but just so inspiring in my opinion to see that the Seattle Storm are here in your community, they're partnering with a native organization, it's not something transactional, it has true meaning and true depth behind it."
Created in 2020, Force4Change is a comprehensive social justice platform built on five pillars: Voting and Education, BIPOC Youth, Amplification of Black Women, Amplification of LGBTQ+ Leaders of Color, and Organizations Serving Black Communities.
"With our Force 4 Change program, one of our main pillars is working with BIPOC communities, so being able to work with Native youth, and not just have Native youth come to us in our home in Seattle, but being able to go out into the community, and bring basketball to them for free, has really opened up us to a whole new community and group of kids that we weren't able to work with before," Berger said.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. Visit Vibrant Emotional Health’s Safe Space for digital resources.