The Ball

by John Fox

  For centuries, the body, with its unholy needs and urges, was regarded as the source of all evil. Gulick and his muscular Christians, however, argued it was only the flabby body that was the source of all evil. Only the strong man who took care of all aspects of himself was fit to do God’s will. Writing of the merits of “vibratory exercise,” Gulick, a kind of evangelical Jack LaLanne, lamented the debilitating effects of the modern age on the manly form:

  Many business men at forty are fat and flabby; their arms are weak, their hands are soft and pulpy, their abdomens are prominent and jelly-like. When they run a block for a train, they puff and blow like disordered gasoline autos. Men get into this condition because they sit still too much; because they eat more than they need, and because they drink.

  He envisioned the complete man as one who balanced mind, body, and spirit. And he captured that vision in his creation of the iconic YMCA triangle—where spirit rests on top, mind on the left, and body on the right. “A wonderful combination of the dust of the earth and the breath of God” is how he described the logo that has survived six marketing redesigns over the past century or so.

  The new game of basketball not only embodied perfectly YMCA principles, it was exactly the draw the young organization needed. From YMCA gyms, basketball quickly spread to church halls, Masonic temples, armories, public schools, city playgrounds, and other urban institutions. It began as and has remained an urban game, born of the spirit of social reform and designed to keep kids off the streets and out of trouble.

  That’s been the mission of the Dunbar Community Center for the past century. The Dunbar is a legendary neighborhood gym that’s spitting distance from the spot on the outskirts of Mason Square. It began its life as a residential learning center for young black women going into domestic service in nearby mansions, and today serves as a safe haven for kids who might not have one otherwise.

  “For two or three hours they’re not getting robbed, not getting shot. They’re playing ball, having fun,” yelled Mike Rucks, the gym’s 56-year-old athletic coordinator, over the afterschool din of squeals and sneakers.

  It’s never been just fun and games at the Dunbar, though, Mike admitted. The gym has a hard-earned reputation as proving ground, or burial ground, for up-and-coming players in the region.

  “They used to say around here that you hadn’t played till you’d played, and survived, Death Valley.”

  Death Valley is the name for the Dunbar’s original gym, now closed and replaced by a shiny new facility that can accommodate the center’s ever-expanding youth programs. Mike led me down the hall, where he fumbled for keys and unlocked a dented door. He flipped the lights on in the gym, which had reverted to a storage area, revealing colorful murals and an old-school court hemmed in by tiled walls and a stage located just a few perilous steps behind the boards. The gym earned its name as much from the talented house players who repeatedly schooled visiting teams as it did from the court’s hard edges that drew plenty of contact in heated games.

  “Man, we had some great throw-downs in here. Place would be packed, people lining the walls, talking trash: ‘You can’t play. Your mother can’t play.’ ” One of the visitors who ventured into the Valley and climbed out intact was a young man named Julius Erving, who came up in the late 1960s while he was a student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

  Lots of great, lesser-known players got their start here too, said Mike. Players with nicknames like “Gimp” and “Treetop.” Some who made it, like Travis Best, a talented guard from Central High who once scored 81 points, a state record, in a single game. He went on to play for Georgia Tech, the 1999–2000 Indiana Pacers team that lost in the NBA Championship to the LA Lakers, and various Euro teams. And then there were the ones whose hoop dreams were cut short. Mark Hall, three-time state champion who went on to play for Minnesota and was drafted to the Atlanta Hawks in 1982 but struggled with addiction and died from a cocaine overdose six years later. And Amos Hill, whom Mike and others describe as one of the most talented players to ever come through the Dunbar. “He never had some of the breaks growing up that kids have today, though,” Mike said, shaking his head.

  “I blame some of the coaches as much as anyone. They’ll use a kid, tell ’em what they want to hear. I see it around here. Once the kids turn fourteen, that’s when the vultures start swooping in.” He’s become so disgusted by the coaches who prey on young talent that he’ll only coach up to age 13.

  The stories of youth basketball’s dark underbelly and coaches and recruiters behaving badly are far too commonplace. In his devastating book Play Their Hearts Out, Sports Illustrated writer George Dohrmann went undercover to report up close on the corruption that’s rampant in a sport where players start being ranked at the age of 10. He tells the story of Demetrius Walker, now playing for New Mexico, who was described by Sports Illustrated in 2005 as “14 going on LeBron.” Walker’s Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) coach, Joe Keller, professed selfless concern for his charge’s well-being, arranging for him to be homeschooled by a tutor, caring for his well-being. “I’m not going to get a thing out of this,” Keller told Sports Illustrated in 2004. But as Dohrmann later exposes, Keller had arranged for homeschooling so Walker could repeat eighth grade and remain eligible for his AAU team. There was no tutor, and for an entire year the boy received no instruction at all. And it turns out Keller’s real aspiration was to get a cut of Walker’s contracts once he made it to the big leagues. “Within six years,” he later boasted to Dohrmann, “I am going to be a millionaire.”

  Mike has seen as bad and worse in the 30 years he’s been hanging around the Dunbar. And he knows enough not to underestimate the make-or-break effect coaches and mentors like him can have on the lives of the kids who pass through his gym. He shares a philosophy, and coincidentally most of a name, with Holcombe Rucker, the renowned New York City Parks Department employee who in 1946 took responsibility for the playground cage at Harlem’s St. Nicholas Projects and turned it into his own private laboratory.

  “Ruck,” as he was known by everyone, believed that basketball could be a one-way ticket out of the ghetto for talented black youth. And for the ones who never made it, it could be a way to learn life lessons that would help them succeed elsewhere. In the absence of city funding, he begged and borrowed balls, recruited volunteer refs, and set up a teen-targeted summer league and a legendary tournament. The Rucker, as the park was dubbed, wasn’t the place to refine your passing game. It was all about in-your-face street-ball theatrics and flash. As Nelson George paints the picture in his book Elevating the Game, players picked quarters off the rim after a layup and performed 360-degree dunks years before any Nike ad showed them how.

  Surprise visits by the likes of Dr. J, Wilt Chamberlain, and Nate “Tiny” Archibald would set up one-on-one challenges where a local underdog could show his stuff and maybe, just maybe, get recruited to the pros. “This was on-the-job training when no jobs were available,” wrote Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of playing at the Rucker. “These were philosophers out there, every one-on-one a debate, each move a break through concept, every weekend a treatise. I took the seminar every chance I could.”

  And for Ruck it was all about education. “Each one teach one” was his motto, and every chance he had he’d do just that, bending kids’ ears about staying in school and the value of education. Between games, he’d teach impromptu English lessons, look over kids’ homework, and choose players based on report card scores. It’s been said that through his efforts 700 kids received scholarships to help pay for college.

  The coaches across Springfield at the small New Leadership Charter School have had outsized success with the same kind of education-first philosophy. The middle and high school with 500 students opened its doors in 1998 in the heart of one of Springfield’s most challenged neighborhoods. But unlike other public schools in the city, there are no metal detectors to pass through and no police presence—just vigilant teachers, parent volunteers, and kids who, for the mos
t part, steer clear of the worst trouble.

  At the Dunbar I’d been told, “Go over to New Leadership. They’ve got a story you need to hear.” Even though the school was only a mile and a half away and I had the right address, it took me forever to find it. After looping the block a couple of times, passing empty lots and the occasional boarded-up, derelict house, I spotted a young man standing on the steps of an old brick Catholic school waving to me. New Leadership, I learned, leases the building from the archdiocese and doesn’t have a sign of its own.

  Joseph Wise, the studious-looking 29-year-old dean of students and girls basketball coach, greeted me on the stone steps, wearing a crisp white shirt and bright striped tie. He hurried me into the school’s tiled lobby.

  “This is not an area you want to be lost in,” he cautioned.

  Having grown up in New York City in the 1970s, I have pretty high standards for what I consider to be urban blight. I shrugged his comment off, thinking he was taking me for just another white kid from the suburbs. “It honestly doesn’t seem that bad.”

  “Oh, don’t be fooled,” he laughed. “It’s plenty bad!”

  The school, Joe told me as we walked down the hallway past trophy cases, is focused on “character development and college prep—in that order.” And they’re guided by a simple mantra that appears everywhere: “Success is the only choice.” So far, at least, it seems to be working. All 28 students in their first graduating class went on to college—a remarkable statistic in a city where only half of the students who start high school ever graduate.

  Joe walked me down the hall to Coach Gee’s office, a storage closet behind the gym. Dusty trophies shared precious shelf space with toilet paper and cleaning supplies. Capus Gee, a broad-shouldered 52-year-old with a resounding laugh, doubles as boys basketball coach and head of maintenance. As we talked, balls repeatedly pounded the plywood board separating the office from the gym on the other side. Coach Gee recalled with visible pride the early days starting up New Leadership’s basketball program.

  “Back then classes were happening in modulars and the only ‘gym’ we had was a cornered-off area of the cafeteria. Every practice I’d be calling around to churches all over the city, looking for a place to play. Half the time we’d be locked out, so we’d put the balls down and run laps outside instead. No surprise our kids could outrun the other teams every time.”

  Things haven’t changed much since then. The school’s lease requires them to be out by 2:30, so they have to find other homes for afterschool activities. The girls team practices in a tiny grade school gym, with lunch tables pushed against the walls, and the boys JV team has use of a half-court at another gym.

  About the time the program was getting off the ground, Springfield cut its budget for school sports by a third, leaving a gaping hole in a program that only charges players $10 to register and has to make up the difference.

  “We didn’t ask for more help from the city. We just wrapped our arms around each other and did it ourselves,” said Coach Gee.

  “Most of these kids are being raised by a single parent, or often a single grandparent. Some families can’t even come up with a $10 registration fee—or it’s either that or pay for the heat to be on. But everyone chipped in and cooked dinners to sell. Heck, I even cooked!”

  The team raised $3,500 to close the budget gap that year and it showed the community what they could do when they all came together around a cause.

  “Ever since, our end-of-the-year banquet has become famous. Other schools with big budgets are eating crackers and cheese. We have fried chicken, ribs, every kid gets a trophy and a nice hoodie. They leave feeling good about themselves.”

  Coaches Gee and Wise live for basketball, trading stories of local heroes and high school stats. But for them it’s just part of a bigger, more important picture. Playing ball is just a way to build a kid’s character and confidence, teach them about discipline, teamwork, and other life lessons. And they know that for some kids, it’s the magic carrot that keeps them in school, off the streets, and out of trouble. As a policy, the coaches see progress reports for their players every two weeks and hold them accountable.

  While every coach would pay lip service to the same philosophy, Coach Gee knows too many coaches who are more likely to put winning first. He shared the story of one of his most promising players—“kid was fast, great jump shot, you name it”—who was struggling in school and had to be held back. Another high school’s coach lured him with the promise that if he joined the school’s program he wouldn’t need to repeat his year. The student left New Leadership but ended up getting held back anyway, so he transferred to another school and got held back again. Now he’s 20 years old, taking freshman classes, and trying to figure out where the road leads from here.

  I asked him if he knew of Amos Hill and what happened to him.

  “Everyone who knows Springfield basketball knew Amos Hill. Most gifted athlete that ever came out of Springfield. But the same thing happened to him, only worse. Do you know he got all the way through high school and couldn’t read or write? No wonder the poor guy drank himself to death.”

  “Our kids know school and home come first,” added Joe. “If you want to play for the team, you need to keep your grades up and do the right thing at home.”

  In 2004, the first year of New Leadership’s boys basketball program, with no seniors to play and no gym to call their own, the varsity team won the western Massachusetts conference for their division and went on to be the first charter school to play in a state title game.

  “That win was big for the boys team,” said Coach Gee. “But that was just the beginning. Then Qisi joined the girls team and put New Leadership girls basketball on the national map.”

  “Qisi” is Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, an honors graduate from New Leadership, now playing as a second-year point guard for the Division I Memphis Tigers. And if there’s anyone walking the streets of Springfield today who embodies the full legacy of James Naismith, Bilqis has got my vote.

  In 2009, she finished her senior year at New Leadership with a staggering 3,070 career points, shattering the state record set 18 years earlier by University of Connecticut and WNBA star and TV commentator Rebecca Lobo. It was beyond unlikely that Bilqis could come out of a tiny unknown Division III charter school like New Leadership to surpass Lobo’s long-standing record by 300 points. It was astounding that she stood only five feet, three inches, 13 inches shorter than Lobo, when she set the record. But the most powerful part of her story, and the part she’s most proud of, is that she did it all while staying true to her beliefs as a devout Muslim woman. For four years, Bilqis drained jump shots, sunk buzzer beaters, and took the lane through a wall of much taller players with her arms and legs fully covered and a traditional hijab scarf wrapping her head.

  I visited Bilqis at her Springfield home on an early summer day. Aidan came along, lured by the promise of a visit to the Hall of Fame. Bilqis was home from Memphis for a few weeks of family time before returning for training. She met us in the front yard of her yellow-sided house wearing a Gap sweatshirt and a black head scarf and greeted us with a shy smile and polite handshake. She’s soft-spoken and humble but exudes a kind of don’t-mess-with-me determination and confidence, all characteristics that seem to run in the family. Her father, a limo driver, was in the driveway washing his car. Her mother, who has run a day-care center out of the house for 30 years, was busy minding her grandchildren, who were chasing each other in circles. Both are converted Muslims who have raised their eight children within their adopted faith.

  From as early as Bilqis can remember, she had a basketball in her hands and an uncanny ability to find the hole in any defense.

  “We had a little-tike Nerf hoop in the living room,” she said, showing Aidan the spot where it was set up. “My brothers would play against me on their knees.”

  “Really? How many brothers?” Aidan asked.

  “At least two. I was always being double-teamed, but tha
t’s how you learn, right?”

  Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir playing for New Leadership, 2009.

  From there it was driveway ball, AAU programs, and countless miles of road trips—but academics always came first. Her mother chose to homeschool her youngest rather than subject her to the Springfield public school system, where her older brothers had gotten “mixed up in stuff.” When eighth grade came around, her AAU coaches encouraged her to attend one of the large public schools with established basketball programs. But her mother was having none of it. So off she went to New Leadership, a school with no girls basketball program to speak of and no gym to call its own.

  It helped that her brother Yusuf had found both academic and athletic success there, having helped lead his varsity team to the 2004 state championship. As Bilqis was entering her new school, her brother was heading to Division II Bentley College on a full scholarship.

  “That girl defined scrappy,” recalled Joe of the four-foot, ten-inch, 80-pound girl who showed up that year to play on his new team. “Her jersey was hanging off her. But then she goes out in her first game and scores forty-three points, sixteen steals, ten assists. We were all like—whoa!”

  In her freshman year, following Islamic law, she had to begin covering up. There was never a question of whether she would. She was devoted to her faith and to the sacrifice and discipline it required of her. That included playing on an empty stomach while fasting during Ramadan, pulling over on the side of the road or ducking into the nurse’s office to pray five times a day. But covering up was still a huge hurdle for a self-conscious teen to overcome, let alone a rising athlete like Bilqis.

  She remembered the first day her mother dropped her off at practice in her new attire. “I was crying, I was so scared. I didn’t know what my friends were going to say.”