There's no sleeping in for participants in the Opportunity Youth Spring Break programs, and it showed on the faces of young people assembled at the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA.

Fully awake or not, they were there to hear Curt Maggitt, former UT and NFL football player, talk about his life and his philosophy of "adding tools to the toolbox."

Maggitt, founder of The Edge Foundation, tells the young people about growing up in Florida and coming to UT for college "to explore a new community." As a freshman, he started as a linebacker for the Volunteers, the first freshman to do so in 50 years. He saw a path to the NFL, but a hip fracture sidelined him. 

"Things happened I couldn't control," Maggitt said. He wondered who he was without football as his identity. Turns out, he wasn't just football. 

Maggitt became a licensed realtor. He got a scuba certificate and dove with sharks. He trained as a professional photographer. He earned an MBA from the Haslam School of Business. 

"Why am I telling you all this?" he asks. "Because it's possible." 

The day continued with a leadership exercise disguised as a game of tag. 

Maggitt welcomed Tyvi Small, UT Knoxville’s vice chancellor for diversity and engagement, and Phillip Bateman, President of New Horizons Center for Experiential Learning. 

"You're here today because someone thought you were a good leader," Bateman says before the challenge begins. 

The rules are these: everyone starts out with a bandanna tucked in their back pocket or waistband. Each player's goal is to grab a bandanna. Lose your bandanna? You're frozen....unless you can grab someone else's bandanna. The last player with a bandanna wins. 

The game is more of a free for all, with some players jumping in and out of the boundaries, hugging the gym wall, or not staying frozen if they've lost their bandanna. When an ultimate winner is chosen and the game ends, Philip asks the group: "Who saw someone break the rules?" Everyone raises a hand. "Was that good leadership? What are you telling the team if you're willing to break the rules to win?" Food for thought and just the beginning of an empowering day. 

Just a mile or so outside downtown, a quieter crew of teens are combing the grounds of Crestview Cemetery in the West View neighborhood. 

Devon Grant and Lydia Brown of Turn Up Knox are guiding clean-up efforts at the historic Black cemetery, established in the 1920s. This bright, chilly day is their fourth on the grounds spent picking up litter then mowing and trimming around the headstones. 

They spent the first day going over safety procedures when using the equipment, Grant says. The trimmer, traditional mowers and the zero-turn mower were borrowed and rented for the week. 

"We've got some great young people," he says. 

Chief Community Safety Officer LaKenya Middlebrook spoke to the young women participating in the program and thanked them. 

"It says a lot that you're out here, honoring our ancestors," she says. Cleaning up an overgrown cemetery isn't glamorous, but it's appreciated by everyone in the neighborhood and everyone who has family members buried there. 

Grant has worked to maintain the cemetery, which is abandoned and unmanaged except by passionate volunteers like Grant and those who have come before him, including Ellen Adcock, West View Neighbors, and Knox Heritage, who helped post the entrance signage in 2016. 

Watch: WVLT produced a great story on Turn Up Knox's efforts to revive the grounds of Crestview Cemetery.