tcwilliams

OUR OWN MARCH MADNESS, ALL YEAR-ROUND
By Patrick Welsh Sunday, March 24, 2002; Page B01

This time every year, while college basketball players and fans are caught up in March Madness, I get caught up in conversations with school kids and coaches about the sport. And this spring I've become aware of a parallel basketball universe -- overwhelmingly black, usually low-income and widely exploited by cutthroat coaches and sports marketers -- that is embroiling middle- and high-school kids in perpetual sports madness. Meanwhile, a misguided rule aimed at maintaining academic standards here in Alexandria is putting some potential stars out on the street every afternoon instead of keeping them on the court and creating tutoring programs to help them.

Even though I'm a sports junkie and do pretty well keeping in touch with the lives of our students outside class, I've been astonished by how little I knew about this world. I had no idea, for example, that there are scores of basketball leagues and camps in the D.C. area that keep kids playing in games and tournaments throughout the year. But that's what one of my students -- senior Alton Fortner -- told me. "I've played over 90 games a year since seventh grade, and that doesn't include school games," he says. "When I was 13, I played in Martinsville, Richmond and Alexandria on the same day. The coach just put us all in his van and drove [300 miles round-trip]."

"I just got too involved to keep playing football," adds Alton, who, in my eyes, is the best player on this year's T.C. Williams team.

Nor did I know that coaches from some prep schools have street-dude surrogates who hang around the games from sixth and seventh grade on, denigrating public schools and offering players free tuition in exchange for their basketball skills. A T.C. Williams junior, 6-6, 240-pound Willie Shaw, told me all about it: "They keep calling my mother and bad-mouthing T.C.; they tell her they can get me into better colleges." Willie has college recruiting letters pouring in, including letters from Stanford University and University of Virginia.

At first, I had a hard time believing that there are Web sites ranking area high school players -- including DCHoops.com and HoopScooponline.com -- but T.C. starter Maurice Sumter told me he about the sites. Several coaches also explained that Nike and Adidas have foot soldiers scouting middle-school kids, trying to catch the next Michael Jordan to tout their products.

I'll admit that when it comes to the relationship between education and athletics, I'm not always on the high road. In fact, I'm not even sure there is a high road. As a teacher, I'm focused on the academic progress of students, their GPAs and SAT scores. But as a fan, I'm also concerned about other numbers -- my team's wins and losses. If T.C. had all the players who started off in the Alexandria schools, it would probably be ranked among the top five teams in the area every year.

Private schools have been successful in recruiting some of Alexandria's best players. Darian Townes, T.C.'s 6-10 center who led us to the state semifinals last year, transferred to Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington last November, just as the season was starting. To make matters worse, I found out Archbishop Carroll also lured away 6-4 Alexandria freshman Christian Jackson (who scouts say is a potential college superstar), and that another kid from one of Alexandria's middle schools who was on track for T.C. -- senior Ahmad Smith -- was a key to Bishop O'Connell High School's finishing third in The Washington Post rankings of area teams. Talk to any of the players about recruiting, and they all mention Keith Bogans, a starter for the University of Kentucky against Maryland in Friday night's Sweet Sixteen round in the NCAA tournament. Bogans was an Alexandrian who instead played for Catholic power DeMatha High School in Washington.

During the summer and fall leagues, and at tournaments run by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and Youth Basketball of America (YBOA), "Scouts and coaches from private schools are all over the place," Alton told me. When he was in eighth grade, four private schools offered him scholarships. Alton decided to attend Episcopal High, a boarding school in Alexandria, for his sophomore year, but came back a year later to play with his old friends at T.C.

Based on my conversations with players and their families, I've got a good sense of how all-consuming the recruiting process can be. "The recruiting wars for 13- and 14-year-old kids are so intense," agrees Dick Myers, head coach at Gonzaga, Washington's Jesuit high school, "that even after I've gotten players enrolled, I have to be vigilant. . . . When it comes time for players to choose colleges, AAU coaches with ties to shoe companies are trying to keep high school coaches and guidance counselors out of the picture."

These recruiting practices highlight racial and economic differences as some predominantly white private schools bring in black kids to create a compelling basketball product for their affluent student bodies and alumni. When I watched the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC) quarterfinals three weeks ago, I was struck by the sight of five black starting players and 19 white cheerleaders on the floor for Paul VI High. I'm sure these schools are interested in creating a diverse student body, but I wish I saw more evidence of it beyond the basketball court.

In truth, I am not half as annoyed with the private schools that recruit our players as I am with Alexandria's public schools for letting it happen. For every student who is lured away by the promise of glory on a private school team, several others are vegetating or getting into trouble after school when they could be participating in sports. A school policy -- one aimed at countering the overemphasis on sports -- is largely to blame: the requirement that students maintain a 2.0 grade point average if they wish to be on an athletic team.

Now I know full well that if Alexandria's basketball players spent half as much time working on their reading and math skills as they do perfecting their crossover dribbles and jump shots, their SAT scores and GPAs would not be as abysmal as they often are. But I also know that there are kids at T.C. who haven't been maintaining a C and who might just get the leg up in life that they need if they were encouraged to use the skills they have on the court or the football field. As Susan Kaput, head of the T.C. math department, points out, "If we had provided them with the programs they needed from the first grade on, the C rule might be fair. But we have kids coming in here working on a third- and fourth-grade level . . . . Now, when they are light years behind, we take athletics away from them." A better plan for athletes who are failing academics would be to require tutoring or Saturday morning school.

The C rule came into effect shortly after a scandal involving T.C.'s 1987 state championship football season. Two months after he addressed a victory rally at City Hall, the team's captain, Tracy Fells, was arrested for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. From February until his graduation in June, Fells was arrested four more times, and a few days after each arrest was back in school because he had not yet been convicted. His escapades were an embarrassment. Less than a year after a federal court sentenced Fells to 20 years in prison, the school system adopted the C rule.

Even school officials who recognize that the rule often doesn't act as an academic incentive are afraid to say so publicly lest they be accused of having low expectations for students -- especially for black students who are disproportionately affected. So the system throws kids out onto the street after school instead of fostering in them the sense of commitment and responsibility that team play can bring. Fairfax County high schools, meanwhile, which outstrip T.C. in SAT and SOL scores, abide by the state of Virginia rule, which requires that students have only a D average and have passed five subjects the previous semester. Meanwhile, some of the private schools, like Archbishop Carroll, have far fewer academic requirements for playing.

Instead of falling back on rigid rules, the school system should make every effort to bring in and hold on to the inspirational coaches who can get talented athletes to perform on the court and instill in them some lessons that could last a lifetime. For now, as a longtime coach said to me, "The main rule is, 'Don't let your players embarrass us.' You can be totally mediocre as long as you don't make waves."

Two years ago T.C. had the best young basketball coach in the area, Dwayne Bryant, the former Georgetown University point guard whose teammates Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo went on to stardom in the NBA. Not only was Dwayne a brilliant strategist, but parents and fans loved him -- and the players were motivated by him. When Dwayne left T.C. to coach at Georgetown Prep, it was a devastating blow to the kids and to the basketball program. But school officials had a ho-hum attitude. The reaction was the same when we lost a great young baseball coach, Billy Emerson, whose team completed the second-best record in T.C. history. The team hasn't been the same since.

The problems with recruiting and sports marketing are far bigger than our school system, I know. But it's time Alexandria school officials stopped hiding behind a myth of high academic standards and instead put their energy into some realistic goals -- fostering the talents of our best athletes by providing them with committed top-notch coaches and a program that will stick with them even when they are failing. That's one thing I know from more than 30 years of teaching adolescents: If you stand by them, no matter how poorly they are doing, they often shock and delight you by suddenly turning in the right direction. But if you give up on them, you compound their problems and make it much less likely that any positive change will come about.

2002 The Washington Post Company