Each year, the Boys and Girls Club of Hawaii celebrates members who inspire others through their leadership, resilience and service to others with its Youth of the Year speech competition. In this second of three installments, we share the story of one of the top three finishers.

There was no missing Rendle Mones in elementary school.

By the time he was 12, Mones stood 5 feet 7 inches and weighed 200 pounds — great metrics for a kid inevitably made to play center on the sixth-grade basketball team, but not so great for a smart, sensitive kid who just wanted to be left alone.

“I stood out because of my size, and I got bullied a lot,” Mones said. “I took it very deeply. I felt like I wasn’t worth anything.”

With both parents working to support the family and his two brothers occupied with their own pursuits, Mones found himself without the kind of support he needed to turn things around.

“I hung out with the only kind of people who accepted me,” he said. “That led me to be surrounded by drugs and drinking. I didn’t give in to it, but it was around me.”

The trajectory wasn’t promising, but in the seventh grade Mones heard about a dance program offered by the Boys and Girls Club of Hawaii’s Lihue clubhouse and decided he’d check it out.

Like so many other youth in need of direction, Mones found in BGCH a place uniquely suited to bringing out the best in him.

“The environment was so positive, and they really encouraged good behavior and good grades,” he said.

“I felt more accepted, and I felt like I could be myself. After that everything fell into place.”

Now 17, Mones has blossomed into a leader within the club, serving as head coach of the Lihue club’s middle-school basketball team.

Mones devotes four days a week, three to four hours at a time, to the club. Thus anchored in support and positivity, he’s developed the confidence and desire to give back to the broader community through his involvement in Kauai High School’s Key Club and Interact Club.

“One of the kids on the basketball team told me that he saw me as a role model,” Mones said. “I felt really honored. It made me feel like I have a purpose here.”

Huzzah!

Congratulations to Ari Dalbert for winning the Hawaii segment of the 2016 English-Speaking Union National Shakespeare Competition last month.

Dalbert, who previously won the Hawaii competition in 2014 (visit 808ne.ws/ 1Mk0jkk to read about that contest), will compete in the national finals at Lincoln Center in New York in May.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.