FOLLOW THE WILDCATS: Tony Changes Everything

The following blog post was taken from its original location, found here

Welcome to “Follow the Wildcats.” This recent basketball season I did my best to keep an accurate journal of the center-city high school basketball team for which I was the first-year head coach. “Follow the Wildcats” is a compilation of many stories, told through the lens of the Wildcats’ lives. Names and identities of people and places have been changed in deference to the people involved. But everything happened. Boy, did it ever.

Mr. Sampson, the Charternet principal, was fed up with the Tony situation in general. He thought - and I agreed with him - that his mother and other people were misinforming him into thinking he could play for Langdon Public in the fall league. “He can’t play for Langdon, not even in the fall league. It’s illegal,” he said to me in his office the day after Tony single-handedly took down the Wildcats. He said he was going to make some calls to find out Tony’s status as a student and whether or not he’d really be leaving Charternet.

He got back to me later in the day with urgent news: “He can’t leave. He’s not going back to Langdon Public; they won’t take him back. This is the only place he can go to school. Whatever he did, they don’t want anything to do with him at other schools. I’m going to talk to him today.”

Mr. Sampson always tells it like it is. He is passionate about Charternet; it’s a one-of-a-kind place, he was always declaring, and the staff takes on challenges that no other school in the state is willing to take on. He’s only 31 years-old, and already he was in his third year as principal. He told me he saw the basketball program as a means of changing kids’ lives. He didn’t care if we won or lost. He cared that kids like Tony got help when everyone else turned them away.

He’s right: Charternet is unique. We take students living in the direst of situations and see if we can help them right their ship. From being 20 years old and still reading at a third grade level to facing charges of attempted murder and seeing no way out. Indeed, what jail’s like, who from the various ‘hoods is getting out or going in, was a common subject among our students, both male and female.

That night we had another fall league game. I stood at the door handing out uniforms to the first 12 guys who walked in.”Gimme that shit,” I heard someone say as a shirt was ripped from my hands. Tony walked past me and slung the shirt over his shoulder as he walked toward Jabari and our bench. He turned back and smiled widely. Mr. Sampson had worked his typical magic and convinced Tony to play for the Wildcats. I was shocked. Jabari shook his hand and smiled, as the other boys came over and patted him on the back or exchanged their handshake/hugs with him.

And then the Tony show began.

He must have had 35 points, leading the Wildcats to an easy win. He sliced and diced the defense, got his teammates involved (the true mark of hoops leadership), scored at will, and talked trash to the other team’s bench after every swish.

Mr. Sampson was at the game along with some other staff. We all cheered and shouted with every basket. 

A core group of serious talent — Tony and a supporting cast — was starting to emerge.

Tony’s presence changed everything. At each game thereafter, the Wildcats were either competing closely and coming up respectfully short, or just plain hammering teams that never expected their opponents to be any good. The sidelines murmured excitedly with questions about who each Wildcat was, where they were from, and whether they could manage to stay together for the real season.

Good question, I would come to learn.

But for now, the boys started to latch onto the possibility of success. They held their heads a little higher in the hallways and encouraged their friends to come watch their games.

The Wildcats lost a close one in the first round of the playoffs, and with that attention turned to November 28th and the first day of practice.

Little did I know how much work had to be done just to get there.

CHECK BACK SOON FOR MORE FROM “FOLLOW THE WILDCATS!”

NEXT UP: Where’s Julius? Part I

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