exploit 226

SoCal High School & Prep Report

Exploitation? Who's Exploiting Who?
You Be The Judge--(February 26, 1998)

We found this article in our daily search of internet newspapers looking for some news about NoCal in preparation for the playoffs and State Championship games which will be played in Sacramento at the Arco Arena in March, and other stories about prep and high school hoops.

We view the following article from the Gate as perhaps one of the most important articles written on the subject of high school hoops in the past year. It is a copyrighted story from the Gate written by Tim Keown, one of their chief sportswriters, and a noted Bay Area prep basketball literati. The original story can be found here, and we'd urge you to visit their site; it's completely free, and they have some great advertisers supporting their site. We reproduce the article here, with full attribution and for soley non-profit purposes, i.e., because it is such an important piece and deserves to be read by as wide an audience as possible. If you're in the Bay Area, or at an airport in California, then by all mean, spend the 25 or 50 cents it takes to buy the Chronicle or the Examiner. It's worth it. And if you're not there, then visit their site at The Gate.

And as you read this piece, ask yourselves, as we asked ourselves, are we part of the problem, or are we just engaging in a little mindless and fun promotion of the game?

We sure hope it's the latter at SoCalHoops. We don't charge a fee to anyone for what we do. We accept no advertising. We pay for the site out of our own pocket, and believe it or not, it's getting pretty costly. The web traffic has gone from about 30 hits per day, to well over 1000 per day, and since web providers charge by the volume of traffic, we're paying for all of you accessing our stuff. Do we mind. Of course not.

So what is it we do here at SoCalHoops? Perhaps we give some players who probably won't play in college their moment of glory and immortality. Perhaps we give some exposure to some kids who might have the ability to play at the next level, but because of limited time and resources of college coaches and scouts, wouldn't otherwise be known or noticed. We're not exactly sure. But we're gonna keep on doing it.

Why do we do it? We haven't figured that one out yet. Probably because the game is so much fun to watch, write about , and share with others, and we really enjoy watching, coaching, and putting the word out on great players.

Is that a bad thing?

We don't think so.

Sure there are those who, as the author below states are trying to insinuate themselves into the lives of kids as young as 6 or 7 years of age, for monetary gain or for self-aggrandizement. That's not good.

Sure there are high schools who couldn't possibly be as successful as they are without recruiting, even if they deny it. That's not a good thing.

We remember when kids went to their local high school, and the team consisted of kids who grew up together, playing not only basketball, but little league, soccer and other sports, at a time when there was no such thing as "club" ball or "traveling teams". But can anyone turn back the clock? Nope.

Sure there are parents who will "shop" their kids services, sometimes to the highest bidders. Is that bad? You bet. We've already carped and complained enough about that, and frankly we're blue in the face by now. But how do you stop a parent to will trade his kid's education for a chance to win the lottery? We're not sure, but it's probably a job for the school districts and the legislature enacting restrictions on transfers for reasons other than moving from one area to another.

What's the answer? We don't even pretend to know.

All we know is that we're having fun at SoCalHoops, and we hope that those kids whose names and highlights have appeared here understand that the great majority of them will not play at the D-I level, and will probably not get scholarships. The numbers quoted below are pretty conservative. The actual numbers are something like 275,000 high school seniors competing for 300 or so D-I colleges, each with about 5 to 7 spots opening up each year. So that's 1500 to 2100 spots maximum. The best odds of getting a D-I spot then are something like only 1 in 7,600 or .0076. And there are only 32 players in the NBA draft, and only about 60 overall who leave college and make it to the big time. There are more than 600,000 players across the country, so the odds of 600,000 to 60, or 1 in 10,000.

So as long as everyone understands the game, the realities of moving on, and fully appreciates that high school basketball is, after all, just high school basketball, and that the first job of going to high school is to get an education, then no one is being fooled or misled. We certainly wouldn't want to mislead any of the players we write about, and we don't think we do that.

But read the article yourself, and you be the judge.

An Early Lesson In Exploitation
`Leeches' Spoil Spirit of Prep Athletics

TIM KEOWN

Thursday, February 26, 1998

EACH MEMBER of the Vallejo High School basketball team enters the gym wearing a look that makes two announcements: 1) He owns the gym, and 2) he also owns whichever opponent might decide to step inside it with him. This look, accompanied by a painfully slow walk, is worth at least 15 wins a season for the Apaches, a group that seems far too big for its building.

Vallejo is the No. 1 team in Northern California, and among the top five in the state. The Apaches are a riveting sight -- big, strong and impressive. A 6-foot-11 center, a 6-7 strong forward, a smooth 6-3 shooting guard. They play hard, clean basketball. Before a recent game against rival Vintage of Napa, the line to buy tickets stretched out of the building and into the night.

The Vallejo High team is also a perfect example of a growing trend -- some might say epidemic -- in high school sports in general and basketball in particular. Success no longer comes in its purest form. It comes with strings, baggage and the dual vibes of accusation and suspicion.

For various reasons, not all related to basketball, four of Vallejo's five starters are transfers from other high schools. Seven of the team's top 10 players are transfers. They came from De La Salle of Concord, Hogan of Vallejo, St. Patrick's of Vallejo, Novato High.

``The way it is now just creates bad feelings,'' says Vallejo High coach Vic Wallace. ``I wish it would be that a kid would have to stay at a school. As good as we're going now, the truth is these things might eventually drive me out of this. I didn't get into this game to deal with these things.

``High school basketball has become big business, and it's not worth all this. This is still just high school basketball, for God's sake.''

High school players transfer for any number of reasons, and more often than not they are legitimate. Regardless, the current system stigmatizes the innocent along with the guilty.

Corrosive peripheral elements, fueled by the possibility of money and fame, have inched toward the forefront. Agents or representatives of agents lurk on the outskirts, attempting to insinuate themselves into the lives of the best high school players, with expectations of a payoff down the road.

Shoe companies, most notably Nike, have infiltrated the campuses that house the best teams. The shoe company pays money and provides equipment to the schools. In return, the company purchases the opportunity to be first in line if one of the school's athletes makes it big.

The NBA claims to discourage high school players from making themselves eligible for the draft, and yet scouts from NBA teams line up to watch the best high school players.

It's not uncommon for parents -- often accompanied by opportunistic youth- league coaches -- to take an eighth-grader ``shopping'' for a high school, looking for the athletic program that stands the best chance of turning their son or daughter to gold.

Summer-league coaches and self-proclaimed ``scout-recruiter'' types pump up players with compliments and backslaps, force-feeding parents an illogical diet of false hope and unrealistic expectations.

Sportsmanship and the idea of banding together as a team are lost in the swirl of personal ambition. Perspective is gone. Priorities get jumbled. The game no longer is played for the game's sake. Gotta get mine is gradually becoming the lingua franca of high school basketball.

Sadly, everything we condemn as subversive at the professional and college levels is happening in high schools.

The time has come to ask the question: What the hell are we doing, and why?

As one successful Bay Area high school basketball coach said, ``All this is coming together to kill the sport. It's turning it into a meat market.''

Cal assistant and former De La Salle head coach Louis Reynaud calls the phenomenon ``basketball's ugly subculture.'' It consists of parents and hangers-on, a compliment brigade that attaches itself to stardom and doesn't let go.

It's not limited to basketball, either. A friend of mine tells me his son came home from a batting cage near Sacramento the other day and told him, ``Dad, some guy in a suit came up and talked to me today. He said he was an agent.'' The boy is 6-3 with a nice swing and good power. He's also in the eighth grade.

PROFITING ON DREAMS

Would it surprise you to learn there are people out there making a living off the dreams of high school athletes and their parents?

Tom Calise of Vallejo works for The National Scouting Report, and his job is to convince the parents of Northern California high school students to pay him and his company anywhere from $500 to $1,500 to market their children to college coaches. Football, baseball, basketball, softball, volleyball, soccer -- Calise handles them all.

``This is a necessity for any kid who is not a blue-chip player,'' Calise says. ``I ask a kid, `Do you want to play in college?' If they say yes, then I ask where. If they say, `Anywhere,' then that's perfect for me.''

Calise says he mainly pursues freshmen and sophomores, because they get more for their one- time fee. Think about this for a moment. This means he targets the 13- and 14-year-olds. He scouts junior- varsity games. He signs up kids who giggle into their hands and wait for their parents to pick them up at school, kids who stand against the wall at dances and struggle with the concept of an isosceles triangle.

He imbues these kids and their parents with the idea that a college athletic scholarship is no more than $1,500 away. Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but the goal is within reach. Just work with him.

"I've never had a school tell me not to be there," Calise says. ``I've never had a coach refuse to work with me. If a kid doesn't have talent, I'm not interested. I played high school football, basketball and baseball, so I know.''

The emphasis on athletics creates an undercurrent of bitterness. Parents of average athletes, blinded from reality by the visions of fame and money, threaten coaches and accuse them of ruining their child's promising athletic career.

And if you're not getting enough minutes, transfer. If you're not getting enough shots, transfer. If you're not playing the right position, transfer. If you're 16 and talented -- or even if you're 16 and somebody tells you you're talented -- you don't have to take it anymore.

A high school coach will have a student for three years of practices, weight-training sessions and bus rides, but that student can go off on a summer basketball trip and return a different person. Someone tells him he's great, that he should be scoring 20 a game, that he's really a shooting guard and not a power forward, and all the coach's work -- all the dedication and concern -- vanishes.

``The leeches tell the kids what they want to hear, and they tell the parents what they want to hear,'' says longtime Bishop O'Dowd basketball coach Mike Phelps. ``How many kids get scholarships? Not very many. But there are hundreds of kids running around thinking they're going to get scholarships because they're listening to these idiots.

``I always hear about these characters telling kids, `Don't go to O'Dowd -- he won't let you do your thing.' Well, that's right. I won't. I'm worried about 15 kids, not one.''

For information's sake, here are the numbers: There are roughly 250,000 seniors playing boys varsity basketball in the United States; there are roughly 4,500 playing Division I college basketball; there are roughly 35 rookies who enter the NBA every year.

Last year, four high school senior boys from Northern California received Division I basketball scholarships. That includes the Bay Area, San Jose, Sacramento and everywhere in between.

In other words, it's an accident, manna from the skies, a winning lottery ticket.

``They're all looking for the same thing,'' says Vallejo's Wallace. ``It's the magical, mythical answer that will take them to college basketball.''

RUINING AT THE ROOTS

In our somber moments, we assume sports will die from the top down. The head will be cut off by an accumulation of transgressions

--baseball strikes, voided trades, sociopathic $100 million athletes

--and the body will teeter momentarily and then topple. But maybe we're wrong. Maybe we've had it backward all along. Maybe the roots will dry up, and the greater body of sport will commence a slow rot from the inside out.

Because out there in hot, cramped gyms and hardscrabble fields, there are men recruiting 13- year-olds and parents paying for the privilege. There are eighth- graders shopping for high schools on the basis of athletic programs. There are shoe companies buying schools, imprinting an invisible bar code on every kid on the court.

Reality is ignored. Youth is stolen. Priorities vanish in a hazy blur of promises and delusions.

Dreams are being pushed like narcotics.

The peripheral forces are edging in, coming closer and closer. It is an incremental, persistent advance, and the center can't possibly bear up under the burden.

The scent of money has wafted down from the pros to the colleges to the stuffy gyms of towns big and small. There are many hands extended. Somebody will get paid, so why not you? The dedicated coaches will shake their heads one last time and walk away for good.

At the present rate, the periphery will become the center. The invasion will be complete, and the ugly subculture will have the whole mess to itself.