Celebrating the ‘graduates’ success

To help three of its members who are going off to college this fall, Inwood-based Hard Knox is holding a graduation celebration that is doubling as a fundraising event on Aug. 4.

Hard Knox, founded by lifelong Inwood resident Nicole D’Iorio, is an organization that seeks to assist boys from elementary school-age to young adulthood mature into productive members of society.

Using a mix of basketball and rules that revolve around succeeding in school and life lessons focusing on etiquette, D’Iorio’s Hard Knox applies this philosophy: “It is much easier to build a child than that to mend an adult,” she said.

Ahmad Shamseldin, Andrei St. Vistal and Tysean Parker are the young men leaving Long Island for college. Shamseldin, 19, a 2011 Lawrence High School graduate, has been a Hard Knox member since he was 10. Vistal and Parker became members in 2010 and last year, respectively.

Shamseldin has eight siblings, including a twin brother Ibraheem, with whom he played basketball on the Lawrence High varsity team that was a Nassau County finalist in 2011.

He attended the Christian Life Center preparatory school in Houston, Texas, this past school year. Shamseldin averaged 14 points and 5 assists per game for the Cougars. His play and grades earned him a scholarship to Lewis and Clarke Community College in Godfrey, Ill. The Trailblazers coach is Deon Thomas, a former NBA player who also played professionally in Europe. “It helped me deal with different people, different attitudes,” Shamseldin said, previously about his years with Hard Knox. He will major in athletic training.

Though he was working toward his future this year, it was a rough one for Vistal who lost his mother in May to cancer. However, the leadership skills that he exhibited on and off the court that gained him the nickname of “The General” helped steer him through his sorrow.

“Andrei is one of those young people that at any given time you will see him lending a hand to anyone in need,” D’Iorio said.

A summer youth worker who has assisted younger children with their homework, Vistal has also served as a volunteer soccer and basketball referee. He will be attending Denmark Technical Junior College in Columbia, South Carolina, where he will major in sports management.

More than five years ago, Parker’s life was turned upside down after he found that his older brother — by two years — Dominic Williamson was shot and killed on May 28, 2007. Parker went from a successful student-athlete in Far Rockaway to a near destructive path that led him to connecting with D’Iorio at a basketball tournament.

His turn around was marked by a brief regression to street behavior, but was topped by him getting his GED, becoming an after school teacher and a father to a baby girl. Parker will take his newly honed maturity upstate to Dryden and Tompkins Cortland Community College to play basketball and major in criminal justice, minor in early childhood education and take class in auto tech. “I didn’t believe it before, but whatever I put my mind to I can do,” Parker said in a previous interview.

The graduation celebration is in the V.F.W. Hall at 155 Searington Road in Alberston. Several local businesses and individuals have contributed to make the event a success, D’Iorio said.