More Than Just Athletes and Entertainers:

A Founding Champion Proves the Mission Right.

He was one of the first. A founding member who came up in this nonprofit's earliest days and carried its mission all the way to a college graduation stage. What he built over four years at Saint Elizabeth University is the clearest answer THEACADEMY365 has ever had to the question: Does this work matter?

On May 15, 2026, Christopher Defendre — Class of 2022, a founding member of THEACADEMY365 and one of the original Champions who helped shape the identity and spirit of this nonprofit from its earliest days — walked across the graduation stage at Saint Elizabeth University. He accepted his diploma with the same composure we always recognized in him: steady, deliberate, earned. In that moment, he became something beyond a graduate. He became OUR first. The first Champion shaped by THEACADEMY365’s investment in Black and brown youth to complete a college degree.

The words — our first — carries everything. It carries the years of belief poured into him by people who saw more in him than a box score. It carries every conversation, every push, every moment when the message landed and took root: you are bigger than a game. And it carries the weight of every young man connected to THEACADEMY365 who now has a face, a name, and a story to hold onto when someone asks them whether any of this is really possible.

Chris Defendre answered that question with four years of his life. And the answer is yes — emphatically, remarkably, undeniably yes.

THEACADEMY365 has never been in the business of producing athletes. It has always been in the business of developing black boys. Sports is the common language.

Purpose is the curriculum.

— THEACADEMY365

A record written in gold

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Let us not rush past what Chris built in the classroom. Too often, the academic excellence of Black male student-athletes gets buried beneath the highlight reel. Not here. Not today. These honors belong front and center — each one a testament to a young man who refused to be defined by a single dimension:

Magna Cum Laude  —  Highest academic distinction

Department Honors  —  Academic excellence

Sigma Beta Delta Honor Society  —  Business honor society membership

President’s List  —  Multiple semesters

Sister Elizabeth Houlihan Memorial Award  — A distinguished university honor

Sophomore of the Year Award  —  Class recognition

Junior of the Year Award  —  Class recognition

EOF Academic Achievement Awards  —  Educational Opportunity Fund

2024 United East Basketball Champions  —  Athletic championship — Saint Elizabeth University

Read every line of that list. Hold each one. This is not the story the world typically tells about young Black men. But at THEACADEMY365, this nonprofit has never allowed any young man to be reduced to what he can do on a court or field.

The cage we refuse to build

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There is a narrative in this country — persistent, insidious, and deeply damaging — that tells Black and brown boys their worth lives primarily in their bodies. Run faster. Jump higher. Perform. Entertain. The playground is where you belong; the boardroom is for someone else. This message is rarely stated outright. It lives in which questions get asked of young men of color and which ones never come up at all. It lives in the way the community cheers the dunk and overlooks the dean’s list.

The result is a generation of young men who invest everything in a sport that will, for most of them, eventually end — and find themselves standing on the other side without the degrees, the credentials, or the self-belief to build the next chapter. They were celebrated as players. No one told them they were also scholars, leaders, and builders.

“THEACADEMY365 exists because someone had to say it plainly: these boys are more. More than the game. More than the highlight. More than what the world has been willing to invest in them. This nonprofit was built on that belief — and Chris Defendre is what it looks like when that belief takes hold.”

— THEACADEMY365

THEACADEMY365, as a nonprofit, was built precisely to interrupt many damaging cycles — to walk alongside young men in the community and consistently speak a different truth into their lives: you are a lifelong student. You are a thinker. You are a Champion. The ability to play sports is a gift, and it can open doors, but you are the one who has to walk through them with something real in your hands. That has been the heartbeat of this work from the very beginning.

What our first means for what comes next

Chris, being our first Champion connected to THEACADEMY365 to graduate college is not just a personal milestone. It is a community one. Every nonprofit that pours into Black and brown boys needs a first. Needs a visible, undeniable example. Needs someone the younger generation can point to and say: That’s real. He did it. He came from the same place I come from. He heard the same message I’m hearing right now, and he chose to believe it.

Somewhere right now, there is a Champion connected to this nonprofit who is wrestling with whether to take his coursework as seriously as his crossover. Whether the degree is really worth it. Whether somebody like him actually belongs in an honor society. And now, when someone sits with him and holds up the possibility of doing both — the game and the grade, the court and the classroom — there is no need for abstractions. There is Chris Defendre. C/O 22. Founding member. Saint Elizabeth University. Magna Cum Laude. Our first.

That is the most powerful thing this nonprofit has ever been able to point to. Not a program. Not a brochure. A person. And that person, in his own words, understands exactly what is at stake:

“You have to see yourself as more than just an athlete. You have to have a real understanding of who you are, who and what you represent — and know that you have so much more to give to this world than what you can do on a basketball court.”

— CHRISTOPHER DEFENDRE

Founding Member, THEACADEMY365  ·  Magna Cum Laude, Saint Elizabeth University, Class of 2026

He’s not done yet

Chris Defendre understands that a degree is a foundation, not a finish line. He is moving into a Master of Science in Management, specializing in Human Resources Management — positioning himself to understand how organizations work, how people develop, how communities are built and sustained. It is a fitting next step for a young man who was himself one of the first to be developed by people who believed in investing in human potential before there was any guarantee of a return.

He is carrying his roots with him — into graduate school, into leadership, into every room he enters next. That, too, is the work of this nonprofit made visible. Not just producing a graduate, but nurturing a man who will one day be the kind of person who pours into others the way others poured into him.

Our mission, made flesh

THEACADEMY365 has said it for years, in gyms and in conversations, on courts and in quiet moments when a young man needed someone to see him clearly: we are More Than Just An Athletes and Entertainers. You are a full human being with a full life ahead of you, and the world is waiting for what your mind holds — not just what your body can do.

Chris Defendre didn’t just hear that message. As a founding member, he was there when the message was still being formed. He helped give it meaning just by showing up — and then he spent four years at Saint Elizabeth University proving it true in every lecture hall, every honor society, every championship game. He carried the spirit of this nonprofit into every space he entered. And on May 15, 2026, he carried it across a graduation stage — Magna Cum Laude, Department Honors, United East Champion, and something no certificate can fully capture: Our first.

To Chris: what you have done matters in ways you may not fully feel yet. You are not just a graduate. You are evidence. You are the answer to every doubt, every low expectation, every quiet assumption that the court was the ceiling for a young Black man from this community. You showed all of us — and more importantly, you showed the younger Champions still coming up — what a Champion looks like when he walks the full distance.

We are deeply, genuinely proud of you. Now watch what comes next.

And to every Champion whose life has been touched by THEACADEMY365, who is still in the work, still becoming: your name could be next. Not because anyone handed it to you. Because you built it — the way Chris built his. One class, one season, one decision at a time.

You are more than an athlete. You always have been. Go prove it.