CrioloSports Featured Athlete: Alex DoSouto, a story of hope

Boston.com video screen shot

At 18, Alex DoSouto saw his dream shattered when two assailants with semiautomatic weapons opened fire, from a passing car. One round ripped into Alex’s leg, marking him as the fourth brother in his family wounded by gunshots - one died of a bullet to the heart - in the ongoing street war among Boston’s most violent Cape Verdean factions.
“It changed my life,’’ Alex said. “I could have been killed. I said, ‘I can’t keep living like this.’ ’’
Five months removed from a jail cell, Alex enrolled last fall for his senior year at English High School. He is on pace to graduate in June, and has a chance of landing a college basketball scholarship.
The support came from collaboration among the Boston schools, youth-oriented nonprofits, and the new Boston Scholar Athlete program aimed at providing student-athletes, the resources to succeed. However Alex’s biggest supporter is his family, including his two ex-convicts - older brothers Milton DoSouto and Mike Fernandes - who bear scars from a 15-year feud among Cape Verdean crews in Roxbury and Dorchester. The brothers have changed their lives around. They have attended nearly all of Alex’s basketball games along with another brother, Steve DoSouto.
Steve DoSouto runs the Boston Peace Basketball League at the Marshall School. The league which provides a free alternative to the streets for dozens of at-risk youths was funded by Boston Foundation’s StreetSafe program and Robinson’s nonprofit Youth in Crisis Inc., and has support off the Boston Police that sends two officers to provide security.
After years of being caught up in the streets off Dorchester and Roxbury, Alex decided to put a stop to it.
“I didn’t want to become another hole in my mother’s heart,’’ he wrote in his college essay. He also wrote that he recognized “the poor choices I had made, how far they had taken me from my childhood dream, and how I was responsible for being so far away from all that I was capable of.’’

Alex has proven vital to English High team, emerging as one of the city’s top point guards. Beyond his great court vision, passing ability, and leadership as a team captain, the 6-footer has given the undersize English roster a boost in scoring, logging 30 points against New Bedford, and 20 or more in several other games.
English High is 13-7 (10-4 in the Boston City League) and bound for the state tournament.
Several colleges, including North Carolina A&T, a Division 1 program, have shown their interest in Alex.
“My experiences in life . . . have all come together and taught me how to face adversity,’’ he wrote in his college essay. “This has not only made me a better person but has prepared me to face the challenges of my future as a man and college student.’’
His family and the Capeverdean community are counting on him as a perfect example of how education and sports can help divert at-risk youths from the streets.

Video from boston.com




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