You couldn’t spend any time at practice without becoming aware of the alumni, the ones who drifted in and out. Whether it was Shaquille Jones, or Malieke Young, or someone else, each one of them had a story.
On this day it was Shaun Hill.
It was a name I remembered, even if I couldn’t remember seeing him play in high school. But he had been All State for two years less than a decade ago, another local comet who had disappeared just as fast, one more sad reminder of the old Jimmy Breslin line that “ghetto stars burn out quickly.” He had gone to the Community College of Rhode Island, a junior college about fifteen minutes south of Providence in Warwick, but he had lasted only a couple of weeks. Now he was just another young black male who was looking for something, no easy thing in a state where the unemployment rate for young black males is 40 percent.
He had grown up with a mother who struggled with addiction issues, and never knew who his father was until he had all but grown up. Hill had been thrown out of Roger Williams Middle School for what he says was “ruthfulness,” and grew up in South Providence’s dystopian world of guns, fights, and violence. He was nine years old when he watched his grandfather die after being shot on Public Street.
“I refuse to be a statistic,” he said. “Nyblom’s like my father. I tell kids all the time—do the right thing and he will do anything for you.”
“That’s Dave’s new project,” Moors said. “Trying to get him into school somewhere. He’s a good player. Then again, we’ve had guys who have been out of school twenty years and come back and dominate our guys.”
He pointed over to the corner where Wayne Clements was lying in the bleachers with an ice pack on his knee.
“Wayne’s still getting dressed,” he said. “We’ve been practicing an hour.”
“Let’s go,” Nyblom said, frustration in his voice. “We’ve got La Salle tomorrow and if we get drilled just remember this practice. Wayne, if you don’t want to be here go home. Hey, fellas, have we won ten in a row? Am I missing something here? Are we the favorite to win the state tournament? Because this effort stinks.”
Wayne had come late because he’d had tutoring after school, had gone through two drills and now said his knee hurt.
“Yo, Wayne, get in the game,” said Manny. “I want to bang on you.”
“Hey, Wayne, get in the game,” said Ben. “I want to dunk on you.”
Wayne didn’t respond to them. He was on his cell phone.
“I can’t,” he said into his phone. “I’m at practice.”
A few minutes later Malieke Young got into the scrimmage. He doesn’t remember his father, who is in jail, but he and his brother Marquis have different fathers. In many ways Laurence Young, their uncle, had been their surrogate father; he was the one who had made it, the one who had followed the bouncing ball out of the neighborhood to Rider in New Jersey, then on to professional basketball in Brazil. Malieke had gone to Hope because his uncle had gone to Hope. He and Laurence Young were very close; his uncle had brought Malieke to New Jersey one summer so he could play on a Jersey AAU team, and Laurence had told Malieke he was like a son to him. Malieke could cry in front of his uncle, could be vulnerable in ways he couldn’t be with anyone else. He was at Wayne’s house when he first heard that Laurence Young had died, and the hurt went through him like a knife to the heart.
Laurence Young used to ride his bike from South Providence to Hope so he could get in extra workouts; he could have gone either way and he went the right way, became the embodiment of Nyblom’s vision.
So now Malieke Young, seven months out of high school, and with no real place to go, was in the practice because Hope needed bodies.
“Basketball is my life,” he said.
But in all the important ways he was already about the past, or at least it seemed that way on this afternoon in this old gym. For the sad, irrefutable reality about high school basketball is that it’s over in the blink of an eye, that there are always kids coming behind you pushing you out. Even if you’re not ready to go.
This practice session was just one more example, for there was always another game to prepare for, another game to play.
Afterward, the players sat on the floor at center court.
Nyblom stood over them in his blue sweatshirt and tan shorts.
“Useless today,” he said, pointing at Wayne.
“Useless today,” he said, pointing at Devante Youn.
“Mostly useless today,” he said pointing at Manny and Johnson Weah.
“Half useless today,” he said to Delonce Wright.
On and on it went, a mostly useless day.
* * *
“This is reality,” said Bob Whalen, assistant coach Rob Whalen’s father, and maybe Hope’s biggest fan. He was there at all the games, always sitting close to the Hope bench. “A Catholic school and an inner-city school.”
Yes, it was.
This divide had long defined the Rhode Island Interscholastic League, and rarely without a certain controversy, even if it’s often understated. Because the state is so small, the parochial schools and the public schools play in the same league, even though the Catholic schools have always enjoyed certain advantages, namely that they can attract kids from around the state and not just from a certain geographic area. They also have a long history of athletic success, whether it’s Mount St. Charles hockey, which has dominated the state for decades, or traditional all-sports powers Hendricken and La Salle.
So there’s always been a certain resentment, however couched, complete with rumors of illegal recruiting, and the fatalistic attitude that this is just the way it is. It had only increased in recent years as both Hendricken and La Salle have been recruiting more black kids, many of whom would be in inner-city schools if they had stayed in public school, in an attempt to make their school populations more diverse.
La Salle was founded in downtown Providence in 1871 as an all-male school established by the Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic teaching order. By 1925 it had outgrown its original building and moved into a neighborhood in the northwest corner of the city called Elmhurst, just a couple of blocks away from Providence College. It has long been an institution in Rhode Island, with an alumni list of various political and civic leaders, including U.S. senator Jack Reed. LaSalle had transformed itself in recent years, from a traditional all-boys school in one red-brick building that spoke of another time to a co-ed school with a new arts building, a new field house, and new athletic fields in back, to the point that it looked like a suburban school.
Pictures of the past lined the hallway that led to the visiting locker room inside the field house. The hallway was carpeted. There was a donor’s wing. The locker room was clean and well lit, with maroon lockers and white cinder-block walls. It all seemed new. Not like Hope, where pieces of old gum were stuck to the worn gray stairs leading up to the gym.
One little slice of irony was that three of the La Salle players were East Side kids, specifically Camp Street kids—Dexter Thomson, Keon Wilson, and Mikey Clark. There also was the feeling that La Salle was looking to cherry-pick the best football players from the Mount Hope Cowboys, one of the top youth football teams in the state, one that relied heavily on East Side kids and was run by Lorenzo Perry, a former great football player at La Salle who had grown up in the same area.
“Dexter would love to be here with us,” Nyblom said. “He’s always in our gym. But I’m never going to put pressure on a kid.”
Hope’s rivalry with La Salle had become personal in ways that other rivalries hadn’t. Some of that, undoubtedly, was spillover from the fall league, when there had been a little skirmish in one of the games between Hope and La Salle, specifically between Delonce Wright and Jared Thompson, a white guard from La Salle. Then there was the fact that Hope had upset La Salle in the quarterfinals of the state tournament last year.
“These guys got beat by twenty last time,” Nyblom said to his team in the locker room, “so they’re going to be coming after you.”
As soon as the team went out to warm up the jayvee team came slinking in, Pedro Correia behind them, rolling his eyes. They had lost by forty, and sometimes you wondered if they had ever played organized basketball before, so helter-skelter they were, so outclassed in so many of their games.
“Whatever’s not yours, don’t take it,” Nyblom said to them forcefully.
Outside in the cavernous field house maroon banners were on the walls, nine state championship banners in girls’ soccer since 2001. There were roughly 250 people in the bleachers. There was a public address system. There were cheerleaders in maroon-and-white uniforms. This was an atmosphere you rarely found at the Hope home games.
La Salle started out in a zone defense, and right away Hope was in trouble, as if a basic zone defense were some new mathematical equation and they hadn’t done their homework. By halftime they were down thirteen, had thrown the ball away fourteen times, and Nyblom was red-faced and angry.
“If we can’t play together we have no chance to win,” he said emphatically. “That team is out-executing you, and they are out-working you. They get layup after layup because they keep beating you down the court.”
He stopped for a breath.
“Energy and effort. It’s desire, gentlemen. They are out-working you in every aspect of the game.”
He paused again, and when he spoke again his voice was lower.
“We can’t make you do it, fellas, but if you keep playing like this there won’t be any divisional playoffs, never mind the big dance. There won’t be anything.”
“The problem is you all know these guys,” Moors said. “You’re all friends, and you’re too nice.”
With just under twelve minutes to play Hope was only down three, back in the game. They had come out in the second half with much more intensity, and their level of play instantly rose. Then Angel Rivera was subbed in for Wayne Clements as La Salle was about to shoot a foul shot. Instead of coming directly over to the Hope bench Wayne walked over to the opposite side of the court and toward the other end of the gym.
“WAYNE,” yelled out Nyblom, motioning him to walk across the court and come to the bench. Wayne ignored him and kept walking.
He walked all the way to the far baseline as Nyblom stared at him. Wayne slowly walked across the baseline, then came over and sat at the far end of the Hope bench, as far away from the coaches as he could get, three seats removed from the closest Hope player.
A few minutes later, as the game continued, a handful of high school kids sitting five rows behind the bench began chanting, “WE WANT WAYNE.”
They did it three times before Wayne turned around and ran his hand across his throat, his way of telling them to knock it off.
A few minutes later Hope was down thirteen, the game starting to get away from them. Nyblom called a time out. Wayne stood on the outside of the huddle, and when the time out was over he walked back to the far end of the bench. With just two minutes left to play Manny hit a three-pointer, and Hope was down seven with momentum on their side, having put together a frantic couple of minutes. It had been a nice little comeback, bringing some excitement back to the game. But in the end they were done in by their past transgressions, all those old sins that kept showing up like kids crashing a party.
Once again Hope was in a losing locker room, their league record a dismal 3-6.
And Nyblom was pointing at Wayne.
“You guys have to talk to him,” he said, addressing the team. “He’s selfish and he hangs his head the minute things don’t go well. But he won’t listen to me and he won’t listen to the other coaches. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
The room was quiet. Manny sat by himself in one corner, saying nothing. Wayne had his head down, not looking at anyone.
“You sulked,” Nyblom said, looking at him.
Then he addressed the boys sitting on the benches in front of him.
“It’s the halfway part of the season and we’re 3-6. This guy wants to be the leading scorer. This guy wants to make All Division. This guy’s pissed off because he doesn’t play enough. This guy’s pissed because he doesn’t get enough shots. This guy’s pissed because he’s always pissed. There’s simply too much selfishness on this team. You let one get away tonight. This can’t keep going on, gentlemen.”
Wayne didn’t look up.
Into the room walked Arondae Washington, a rugged black man who had once been a very good player at Hope; he was the father of two La Salle players, Keon Wilson and Mikey Clark. Once upon a time, back when he had been at Hope, he had run through the streets of Alexandria, Virginia, with Bill Clinton, when the former president had been involved in the Institute for International Sport, a Rhode Island–based organization. Washington had been picked to run with Clinton, and when he was told that he was going to run with the former president he thought someone was fooling around. And while he was running he kept smiling, to the point that Clinton asked, “Why do you keep smiling?”
“Because you’re in front of me,” Washington told him.
He had been a senior on Nyblom’s first team, back in 1996.
“I’m still a Hope guy,” he said to Nyblom.
“You used to be a Hope guy,” Nyblom said.
Later, Washington would say, “They’re all like my sons,” referring to the players in the game, “for I know where they come from.”
The players were starting to drift out of the room. Because the game had been on the west side of the city there was no reason to go back to Hope on the East Side, where none of them lived anyway. One of the last left in the locker room was Devante Youn, a big kid with a shy smile. He never said much, and because he had gone to Fatima, a Catholic school south of the city, attending for a year before being unable to afford it, and since he now went to E-Cubed during the day, he was a little bit of an outlier on the Hope team. He wasn’t part of the so-called Five Bros, as Marquis, Aaron, Eli, Quenton, and Ben liked to call themselves, as they all lived close to each other in South Providence. He wasn’t a senior, like Manny, Delonce, Wayne, and Johnson. He didn’t have an outgoing personality like Angel. But he had a big strong body and a few decent moves around the basket, and Nyblom was forever on him for not being in good enough shape, for not working hard enough. He never said much, had a certain reserved manner about him that many of the others didn’t possess.
I knew he lived somewhere in the vicinity, and asked him if he needed a ride. The only time I had ever dealt with him was when Jim Black, the third volunteer assistant coach, was helping him with his foul shooting one day after practice. He was having trouble, his form too erratic, and I too was trying to give him a little advice.
“Follow through, Devante,” I told him. “Put your hand right in the basket.”
He kept missing.
“Devante,” I finally said, exasperated. “Make three in a row and I’ll give you twenty bucks.”
I figured there was no way in the world he was going to make three foul shots in a row. And, of course, he did. And, of course, I had to give him the twenty. And, of course, he laughed.
So that was our history, thin as it was.
He lived in a small house on the other side of Providence College, almost in North Providence, with his mother, stepfather, and older sister. His parents had come from Liberia, and when he first started going to school in Providence he couldn’t believe how so many of the other kids in kindergarten were screaming and acting out all the time. So he had ended up in Catholic schools, and when he began high school at Fatima, in a town fifteen miles south of Providence, he had needed to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, put on a uniform, and get to the bus stop; he slept the entire ride. Fatima was only about 5 percent African American, so he was always different. The basketball team was horrible, and it was never easy being there, the long days being just a part of the challenge. Fatima was different from the Providence schools; kids didn’t talk back to the teachers and act out, and the environment was helping him as a student. He did homework, he earned A’s and B’s and was an honor student. And even though his family could no longer afford to send him there, he knew that in many ways Fatima had served him well.
If nothing else, it made him a serious student, to the point that even though he loved basketball he knew that his education was far more important, and that his education, not basketball, would take him places in life. So now he was an honor roll student, wanted to be a civil engineer someday. He had heard so much about Liberia from his mother, how beautiful it was before the war came and changed everything, and he thought he might want to go back there someday and help out. But for now he liked E-Cubed, and he was doing his homework and taking school seriously.
“So you’re smart?” I asked.
He smiled.
“I’m trying to be,” he said.
* * *
But too many kids weren’t trying to be smart. Or if they were, they weren’t succeeding. At least not according to the standardized tests.
Tests had become the national education story, the attempt to find out what was really going on inside America’s classrooms. Whether it was “Race to the Top” or “No Child Left Behind” or the latest popular slogan of the year, public education in the United States had become a huge political football, especially in American cities. That was certainly the case in Rhode Island, where the NECAP—a standardized test designed to measure student achievement—was highly controversial.
In mid-December, three weeks into the Hope basketball season, a woman named Carole Marshall wrote an op-ed piece in the Providence Journal, Rhode Island’s only statewide newspaper.
She wrote that she had left Hope the previous June, after almost two decades of teaching in the Providence public schools. She had been one of the key figures when Hope had been broken down into three smaller learning communities, a decision that saw test scores rise; in 2002, she noted, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges took Hope off the warning list and accredited it, making Hope the only school in the city besides Classical to be accredited. She also wrote that in 2009 two thirds of the junior class in two of the three small learning communities achieved proficiency in reading.
But that progress began to change five years ago, as “all activity was subsumed under the massive burden of standardized testing and record-keeping.”
She wrote that the tests were completely unrelated to the curriculum and did not recognize the various challenges facing urban populations, and that when the results came back the students “were harangued in grade-wide assemblies with threats of not being able to graduate.”
“Shamefully,” she continued, “we have engineered segregated schools for our urban youth and deprived them of equal resources for education.”
By chance one afternoon, I ran into an old pickup basketball friend who now teaches at Hope.
“I’ve been in the system twenty years, three here,” he said. “I got kids who show up for class without a notebook. What’s up with that? Classical is the only school in the city with stability. Here we have a curriculum we follow and that’s it. But I have way too many kids, and they come and go so much my head is spinning. ‘Fuck’ is a common word, and the amount of vulgarity is staggering. It’s common speech.
“The other day I’m walking down a corridor and there are three kids standing there. I look over to see if I know one of them, and one kid says, ‘What the fuck you looking at?’ So I took the kid around the corner and said, ‘You can’t talk to people like that,’ and he just stared at me like he had no idea what I was talking about.
“But it’s always been crazy. I started at Roger Williams Middle School in South Providence and that was like the Wild West, even back then. So this really is nothing new. A kid raises his hand, says he has to go to the bathroom, and comes back in an hour. And they’re evaluating teachers? It’s their fault? It’s like a two-car accident and the cop comes to investigate and he turns to the bystander and says, ‘It’s your fault.’
“But the sad thing, the really sad thing? We’re talking about real people here.”