On a recent Saturday night in Roanoke, two college football teams took to the field and proved yet again that winning really isn't everything. Before a crowd of some 5,000 spectators at Victory Stadium, the immediate objectives for the Panthers from Virginia Union University in Richmond and the Falcons from St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina were, of course, touchdowns, field goals and extra points.

St. Augustine's cheerleaders did their best to keep their fans whooping it up about the Falcon's play.

But the first and foremost reason the two colleges took to the gridiron in the 4th Annual Western Virginia Education Classic was to help raise funds for the drop-out retrieval and prevention program - Project Recovery - operated by Total Action Against Poverty, Inc., a HUD partner.

TAP's dropout program aggressively reaches out and encourages those who have left school to come back and finish their education.

"Thanks to our close collaboration with Roanoke schools," said Dr. Ted Edlich, TAP's executive director, we have the names, addresses and telephone numbers of every kid who leaves school early. Even if the face-to-face conversations we have with these kids doesn't persuade them to actually go back to school, we usually are able to persuade them to at least pursue a G.E.D."

And if that doesn't work, says Edlich, TAP tries to make sure those who have left school can obtain a marketable skill through, for example, TAP's HUD-funded Youthbuild program, which helps drop-outs acquire skills in the construction arts and, even better, helps expand Roanoke's stock of affordable housing.

Thanks to Project Recovery, more than 130 kids have returned to school and more than 145 have completed high school or obtained their G.E.D., reasons why The Roanoke Times has credited TAP's Project Recovery with a significant role in reducing the City's dropout rate.

The football classic was the brainchild of Sherman Lea, regional administrator for Virginia's Department of Corrections, Division of Community Corrections and a former member of both the school board and TAP board.

"We hope to make it bigger and better every year," Lea told The Times. "There's no reason we can't get 15,000 people in here as this grows. If that works, it'll improve what we can do with the dropout retrieval program."

And the final score? Well, Virginia Union defeated St. Augustine's 30-15...and $15,000 was raised for TAP's dropout retrieval program.