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Home › Articles › Teen of the Month › Thomas Rancour

Thomas Rancour

Teen of the Month

By Kelly Burgess


Each month, iParenting.com spotlights a teen who inspires and moves us, who embodies the qualities that we all admire in a person, a friend, and a son or a daughter. Above all, the Teen of the Month is dedicated to making a positive mark on the planet. Rich or poor, famous or not, the Teen of the Month shines as an example of what today's teens have to offer.

Thomas Rancour is the kid you want your kid to grow up to be. Like most teenagers, Rancour, 17, is busy with school – where he takes advanced placement courses – and sports (basketball and cross country), so you'd think that he would use his off time to catch up on TV and video games like most teenagers do. Instead, Rancour, of Bay County, Mich., is anything but typical.

Just a few years ago, he was as far from the athletic, academic, overachiever as you could imagine. What turned his life around was the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. In return, he's spent the last few years giving back what he's been given. And for his efforts, Rancour was named Youth of the Year 2004-2005 by the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Along with the honor comes a $10,000 scholarship and the chance to demonstrate how showing a child you care can make all the difference in the world.

A Rocky Start

There are a lot of sobering statistics about boys raised in homes without fathers. Thomas Rancour (or T.J., as his friends call him) could easily have been one of those statistics. After his parents divorced when he was 9 months old, Rancour's father dropped out of the picture. His mother, Rachel Snell, was left to raise her family. Luckily, she wasn't alone. Rancour's grandfather, Duane Bean, was an active presence in the family's life.

By the time he was about 9 or 10, Rancour was more mature than most adults. His mom, who had gone back to college, began to suffer from serious health problems, and Rancour was pressed into service to help care for his little brother, David. Dealing with sadness, worry and increased responsibilities, he turned to food and began to put on weight.

Luckily for Rancour, his grandfather was working at the Boys and Girls Club of America, and he made it a point to take his grandson along whenever possible. For the first few years, Rancour just hung out, played on the computers and shot some pool. Then when he was in middle school, the issue of his weight began to take a serious social toll. "In school, they only look at the outside, and I was miserable because I was teased constantly," says Rancour. "The [Boys and Girls] club was my refuge because there the kids treat you for who you are and not what you look like. The staff members would never allow that kind of behavior."

At the beginning of his 9th grade year, Rancour decided he'd had enough of his poor physical condition. With the help of the club's staff, he went from hanging out to working out. Rancour began using the gym facilities, ran and played basketball. He lost 80 pounds in just over a year.

A New Life

Empowered by his weight loss and increased level of fitness, Rancour took his newfound interest in physical activity to the next level and got involved in both basketball and cross country at his high school. His newfound self-esteem and desire to be a positive leader led him to get involved in the Keystone Club, a service organization for teens. He also began volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club where he had gotten so much support. "It was one of those things where the staff had made such a powerful, positive impression on me that I wanted to be like them," says Rancour. "To me, the way to do that was to emulate them, and I just started to volunteer to do stuff with the younger kids."

That "stuff" included coaching flag football, officiating at youth basketball games, helping with homework and teaching computer literacy. More important, he hung out with the younger kids, playing pool and just being a friend, much as the older volunteers and staff members had done with him when he was in elementary school. He talks to the younger kids about what he was like at their age, and about the positive changes he's made in his life.

Ultimately, he was spending all of his spare time at the club, about two hours a day. In spite of that, he says he was stunned to be nominated for youth of the year and never dreamed he could actually win it. It is stunning when you consider how rigorous the process is, and the sheer number of other young people Rancour was competing against. Each club makes a nomination; that number is whittled down through a long series of local, state and regional competitions. Finally, five national finalists compete in Washington, D.C., for the title.

Reaching for the Sky

Rancour calls this award a "once in a lifetime opportunity," and he means that on a number of levels. First of all, he gets to travel to places he's only dreamed about. He's already been to Atlanta for media training, and there are trips planned for him to both Orlando, Fla., and San Diego, Calif., to speak at seminars.

Beyond the travel, Rancour sees this honor as a chance to fulfill his future dreams as well. He's interested in a career in aviation and hopes to attend the Air Force Academy next year. Aside from the financial boost the scholarship money will give, he knows that competition for a slot at the academy is fierce. He's hoping that having this major honor on his resume will give him a bit of an edge.

If not, Rancour says, he has an alternate plan that will get him where he wants to go, just maybe in a more roundabout way. One thing he won't do is give up, because he knows if you work hard enough you can accomplish your goal regardless of adversity. "I've been through everything, and have been up and down," he says. "It has never been easy, but I wouldn't take anything back for the world."



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