LOUISVILLE, Ky. — As the first woman to serve as director of athletics for Jefferson County Public Schools, April Brooks hopes to pave the way for the next generation of women.

Brooks met with the girls basketball team at Pleasure Ridge Park High School after watching them play the night before.

“I love watching you all at PRP. This is my second time watching y’all play. You play with heart,” she said.

While she loves watching students in JCPS compete, Brooks was there to talk about a lot more than the game. She gave students a presentation about how she got where she is today as part of a Women’s History Month visit.

She started by telling them she is the first woman and first Black person at the helm of athletics for Kentucky’s largest school district.

“I am extremely excited about that because we know we want to open doors that haven’t been open before,” Brooks said.

While sharing her background, Brooks started by talking about her time as a JCPS student. She said she fell into the wrong path in middle school. She recalls having straight A’s for grades, but all U’s for conduct.

“I was bored. I wasn’t paying attention, so I was getting into trouble,” Brooks said.

Seeing the trouble she was getting into during middle school, Brooks said her parents decided not to send her to Seneca High, where she always thought she would go. She ended up attending Male High School, where she ran track and cross-country.

Brooks said she made great friends there who really helped her become her best self. Some of them she’s still best friends with to this day. While she had turned things around, she still had to figure out what was next.

“My senior year I did not have a scholarship to college. I was really worried,” Brooks said.

She told the students that she started running twice a day to improve her times. Eventually, she got scholarship offers. She went to the University of Kentucky, where she ran competitively.

Listening in the crowd, this story stuck with PRP senior Jamaya Cannon, as she hopes to continue to play basketball after high school.

“I think she’s a good person to go off of because of what she has been through and how she changed it for the better,” she said.

As for Brooks’ path in life, she had a lot of different interests. She recalls loving English in school. She also worked part time with kids at the YMCA. That started a train of parents asking her to babysit and tutor their children. In doing so, she identified a life passion.

“I had a lot of trouble in middle school. That’s where I really lost myself as a student, so I went back and specialized in middle school education,” Brooks said.

She got her master’s degree from Western Kentucky University and later her doctorate from Bellarmine University. That continued education helped propel her from middle school teacher, to principal, to now director of athletics for all of JCPS.

While that is a major accomplishment, she says her greatest one is her family. Her husband is a counselor at W.E.B. DuBois Academy. 

“He’s also an educator, so we are often talking about how we can change the world one student at a time,” Brooks said.

She has three kids in JCPS. Brooks said they are her main motivation for everything she does.

Being that it was Women’s History Month, Brooks also told the students about some women who helped her achieve her goals. She credits her success to advice from her late mother, her best friends from Male High School, other women in education who served as mentors and her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sisters. 

“All of these phenomenal women I showed you poured a little into me,” Brooks told the PRP girls basketball players.

As teammates, the athletes are used to lifting each other up.

“Playing for PRP is fun because you have everybody supporting you and you just get better. They push you to get better,” Cannon said.

In her new role, Brooks wants to increase female participation in sports.

“Participation has gone down by 1,000 female students from 2018 to 2021. For some reason, we have less and less females coming out for sports,” Brooks said. “I am glad to have you all here today, but I want you to encourage some of your classmates to also come out for sports.”

Brooks said sports help students learn to push through adversity, set goals, work together and uplift others. Those are skills that transfer to all avenues of life.

“Your life journey will help somebody else be successful,” she said.