SCITUATE – Like in most American homes, Christmas is a day of giving and receiving at the Bouyssou household.

But the other 364 days of the year are all about giving.

That’s the wonderful thing about high school sports; sometimes you discover the goodness of the human spirit just watching a wrestling match.

So it is with Liz and Serge Bouyssou.

They are the parents of Katelyn Bouyssou, the young girl who burst into the Rhode Island sports spotlight last winter when she became the first female to ever reach the semifinal round of the state high school wrestling tournament.

She did it last February by winning matches against male opponents in the first three rounds of the tournament in the 103-pound class. Of course by then nobody was surprised to see a girl among the state’s high school wrestling elite because Katelyn had spent the winter continually defeating male opponents en route to three titles and several other top four finishes in high school invitational tournaments throughout New England.

Last year she was a 14-year-old Scituate High freshman who wrestled as an independent entry in Interscholastic League competition because Scituate doesn’t have a wrestling team. Now she’s a sophomore at the Cranston West High vocational school. That means Rhode Islanders will see a lot more of her this winter because she will be wrestling in regular Interscholastic League dual matches as a member of the Cranston West wrestling team as well as all the tournaments.

But this is more than a story of a petite girl holding her own against male opponents in a physical sport.

It’s a story of how a father’s passion for judo and wrestling not only has helped his daughter become a world-recognized judo performer and high school wrestling star, but also has changed the lives of teenagers who easily could have become casualties of the urban streets.

It’s a story of how her parents are paying back for opportunities they were given when they were young by sharing their home and their family with teenagers who need help finding a direction in life.

At the Bouyssou house it’s called “Blessing It Forward,”

It started 19 years ago when Liz and Serge Bouyssou were married. He was 21, she was 19. The first year they were married they took a 10-year-old foster child into their home.

“I was 21 years old and my wife was 19, what did we know about raising a 10-year old, but it worked,” said Serge Bouyssou. “Today that kid is married with his own kids.”

Over the next 18 years there would be about 20 more young people who would spend various periods of time living at the Bouyssou home being taught how to become a productive member of society by people who care.

Nobody knows better than Serge and Liz Bouyssou what it means to be a young person who needs a helping hand.

“When I was young I experienced a lot of difficult times. I was a Tides Family Services kid,” Serge Bouyssou offered about the social service agency run by the De La Salle Christian Brothers. “My wife was a foster child. We were both blessed with people around us who helped us. We just want to give people a sense of family.”

And so they have shared their home and their family of four biological children, Katelyn, and two younger brothers and a younger sister, with other young people.

“Usually we have about 10 kids living in our house, including our own four,” said Serge Bouyssou. “We usually end up with kids in their teens and later teens. We help them get through school, we advocate for better education for them, we help them get jobs and get into college.”

There have been a couple of permanent guardianships through the years, but for the most part it’s a support system. The teenagers will spend a few months; a year – maybe longer - living with the Bouyssous. Often it’s while their own families are working out some problems.

“A lot of times all these kids need is just a little support, just a little somebody saying this is what you need to do. This is how to do it,” said Serge Bouyssou.

And quite often the testing ground for whether a kid is worthy of becoming an extended member of the Bouyssou family is the judo and wrestling mat

Serge Bouyssou started learning judo about the time he was entering kindergarten. He progressed to the point where he won national judo competitions and along the way he added wrestling to his repertoire. It was something that was always part of his life, something that was a positive when other aspects of his family life were going through tough times. So it’s not surprising as he grew older he became an expert judo teacher. He is the coach for the U.S. judo team that will compete in the 2010 World Youth Olympics.

Seven years ago he opened the Mayo Quanchi judo and wrestling club in an old storefront in the Phoenix section of West Warwick. It’s where families get their young kids involved in introduction to judo and wrestling programs; it’s where some of the state’s top high school wrestlers regularly work out and it’s where lives are turned around.

“I grab kids anywhere I can,” said Bouyssou, who is Tides Family Services director of vocational education and buildings and grounds. “I get kids from Tides and if I see a kid standing on a street corner I say to him, Do you want to go to judo?. Do you want to wrestle? The judo is how we get to know them. That’s how we start establishing the relationship. They end up excelling at judo and wrestling.”

“It’s great for these kids to come in here. We have set up a structure for them so they come in and see what structure actually is. A lot of these kids have no idea of what structure actually is. They get a lot of things they don’t get in their families. There are so many ideals that our kids see here that more fortunate kids see every day and just take for granted. When these kids here get a little piece of it, you would be amazed what they do. Kids want discipline. They don’t want to run-a-muck and think nobody cares about them and all the other stuff. We don’t take any pay for the work with the judo club. All the money we get from the fees goes back to the outreach program for the kids.”

Like anything in life, there are successes and there are failures – not every kid from the city streets relishes the structure, discipline and physical demands of sports like judo and wrestling.

“Nobody is harder on these kids than me. If you come to a practice you’ll see I’m a hard-ass in practice. There’s no ifs, ands or buts”, said Bouyssou.

But the successes are so impressive.

“I owe them my life,” Hope High wrestling coach Eddie German offers without hesitation about the Bouyssous.

“My mother abandoned me when I was 16. She just left me and moved to Florida. I was – what do they call it – emancipated,” German continued.

“My wrestling coaches at Mt. Pleasant started worrying about me because I was getting in trouble and getting arrested. So they took me to Serge and I became part of the club. Serge and Liz offered me a place to live. I wanted to do it on my own, but they said just stay here a few months, so I did. They taught me all the things I needed to know to make it on my own. DCYF took care of every thing else, but Serge was always coming to the apartment checking on me. I wasn’t the easiest person to work with, but Serge would sit me down and correct me. He was tough. It’s a good thing he was, because if it wasn’t him, it would have been the police.”

“He took me to tournaments all around and he never asked for a single dollar or to win a championship. He just asked that I be productive in everything I did. I finished high school, graduated from Rhode Island College and now I’m a teacher and I coach a great group of guys at Hope. I’m married now and my wife and I have a beautiful baby girl, but I will always be a member of their (Bouyssou) family."

Everett Desilets was a 10-year-old kid standing on the street outside the Davey Lopes Rec Center in South Providence the first time Serge Bouyssou saw him six years ago.

“I asked him if he wanted to try judo,” Bouyssou said. “The judo and the wrestling are the carrot that gets them into a structured life.”

So Bouyssou began bringing Desilets from Providence to West Warwick for judo and wrestling instruction. Before long Desilets was a member of the Bouyssou extended family.

“Everett has lived, on-and-off with us, since he was in the fourth grade. We have advocated for him for a better education,” said Serge Bouyssou. “My wife tutored him those first few years because he was really lacking. Now he is doing well. His sister is his legal guardian and she has done the best she can. We work closely with her. We have developed a relationship of support with his family as we have with a lot of the other kids.”

These days Desilets is a Cranston West junior and member of the Falcons four-time defending state champion wrestling team, as is Ricondo Cole, another Bouyssou extended family member. During the school year they live with a Cranston family whose son was a former Cranston West wrestler and a member of the judo/wrestling club.

“We’re amazed at the people in our program who have stepped up and helped us with these kids,” said Bouyssou. “They will say, I’ll help you with that kid. We’ll take that kid. Liz and I realize we are only two people so these people have blessed us by helping us with other kids.”

“One thing my mother actually did say to me once was ‘Serge you can’t save the whole world.’ I thought, maybe I can’t, but I can save my corner,” said Bouyssou.

Blessing It Forward - Christmas and 364 other days. 

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Washington