Montana Butsch '97

In his work at CTC, Butsch draws heavily from his background as a Chicago native who grew up near the Cabrini Green public housing project and, of course, from his passion for rowing. He first took up the sport as a Loyola sophomore and continued rowing at the University of Pennsylvania and Oxford University.    

Butsch completed the Executive Scholar certificate program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in 2012 and earned his MBA from IE Business School in conjunction with Brown University in 2016.

Today, Butsch continues his dynamic work at the intersection of sport and opportunity. He discussed this fascinating interplay during his TED Talk in Madrid in June 2017 and further illuminates some of  his groundbreaking work for us.

Through the sport of competitive rowing, the Chicago Training Center creates opportunities for underserved Chicago youth to challenge themselves to achieve their athletic and academic potential. Founded on the core values of sportsmanship, expanding horizons and community responsibility, the CTC aims to become a pre-eminent afterschool youth outreach model that can be replicated in other urban communities across the United States.

Sports-like rowing (e.g., squash, fencing, diving, chess, lacrosse, etc.) have team memberships that look like affluent America—for kids with opportunity. Their schools supported expensive sports, their parents were able to pay for camps, and they were able to use the recruitment game to their benefit when targeting schools that are highly selective.  

Inner-city youth can leverage alternative sports, like rowing, to distinguish themselves and attract opportunity. The recruiting coaches and institutions would love to be more diverse. All things being equal—they would rather take kids from underserved backgrounds than those from another prep school. This is the opportunity I talk about—this is interestingness—and it is vastly unrecognized by the population that could benefit the most.

 

The benefit found within CTC (and programs like ours) is that we deal with a population of kids that is open to new opportunities and often highly motivated to overcome barriers. Though we rarely (yet) create a tier-1 rowing recruit, we regularly create a very attractive college candidate for selective schools, and rowing is a huge catalyst for that.

 

When underserved youth see the night-and-day difference in their situation compared against the millionaire lifestyle flaunted by the media and upheld as a norm through advertising, it is easy to understand why many see professional sports as an optimal pathway. Unfortunately, these youths are often blind to the reality of what those pathways require or the odds of success—or they incorrectly believe that they are exceptions to the general rule.

Their focus is misplaced away from other opportunities and professions that are a) much more likely to be obtainable, b) can provide a tremendous lifestyle and c) are starving for participants from nontraditional backgrounds.  

Immeasurable. I volunteered every year at the Howard Day Care Center, went on Kairos, did a retreat to Kentucky with Mr. Michael Hugo and studied social justice. I did this working around my commitment to rowing, which I did year-round after my sophomore year. If it was not for Loyola providing these opportunities who knows what I would have been involved in—Loyola was the only school-sanctioned team in the entire state at that time. Sometimes, it is better to be lucky than to be good!

 

We hired a new executive director, and she is running the day-to-day at CTC. Her goal is to build off the platform that I helped shepherd and make use of the new boathouse that was opened last December. I will eventually move to the Board once I settle into a new professional career—time to make use of my MBA!

 

Butsch, who will celebrate his 20th Loyola Academy reunion this fall, has appeared on CBS Nightly News, in the New York Times and has twice been interviewed on iHeartMedia. To learn more about Butsch and the Chicago Training Center, click here.