Post by milwsport on Feb 27, 2006 1:42:50 GMT -6
THIS IS A LONG READ BUT WORTH THE TIME
Each day at Eldon Academy in Michigan, Dewayne Walker could sleep till 11 a.m., practice basketball for 90 minutes and never spend more than two hours in class. He said that the only other students were his teammates, that his only teacher was also his coach. "I'm not a Harvard-type person," Walker said, "but I thought it would be a lot more work."
Justin Gardenhire laughed when recalling his classes at Redemption Christian Academy in Troy, N.Y., where many high school students are basketball players. Gardenhire said the school was so disorganized, a Spanish class one day would be French the next. "We had a spelling class," Gardenhire said. "I was like, 'Come on, are you serious?' "
Phil Jones attended Lutheran Christian Academy, an unaccredited private high school in Philadelphia where, he said, all of the students were basketball players. In his seven months there, he said, class consisted of the coach, Darryl Schofield, giving workbooks to the students to fill out. "I thought prep school was supposed to be hard," Jones said.
In the past two years, these young men attended unusual institutions — some called prep schools, some called learning centers — where all or most of the students were highly regarded basketball players. These athletes were trying to raise their grades to compensate for poor College Board scores or trying to gain attention from major-college coaches.
An investigation by The New York Times found more than a dozen of these institutions, some of which closed soon after opening. The Times found that at least 200 players had enrolled at such places in the past 10 years and that dozens had gone on to play at N.C.A.A. Division I universities like Mississippi State, George Washington, Georgetown and Texas-El Paso.
"I would say that in my 21 years, the number of those schools has quadrupled, and I would put schools in quotation marks," Phil Martelli, the men's basketball coach at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, said. "They're not all academic institutions."
The National Collegiate Athletic Association acknowledges that it has not acted as such places have proliferated. For years, its Clearinghouse has approved transcripts from these institutions without questioning them.
Until revelations last year about a diploma mill in Florida and concerns about other schools like it, the N.C.A.A. chose not to police high schools. Although the N.C.A.A. recently commissioned a task force charged with curbing academic abuse, it still faces the tricky task of separating the legitimate from the nonlegitimate schools.
The Times found several schools with curious student populations.
¶Genesis One Christian Academy in Mendenhall, Miss.: Two years ago, this kindergarten-to-Grade 8 school added a high school and a Grade 13, for basketball players who did not graduate to raise their grade-point averages. At least 33 of about 40 students at the unaccredited high school play basketball, and its stars have signed letters of intent to attend Oklahoma State, Arkansas and Alabama.
¶Boys to Men Academy in Chicago: The student body consists of 16 basketball players, who can earn credit for the equivalent of eight high school core courses in a year by studying online through an accredited correspondence school.
¶Rise Academy in Philadelphia: Opened last fall, it outsources lessons to others, including Lutheran Christian and two online high schools.
¶God's Academy in Irving, Tex.: A summer basketball coach started with three students in August. Now 40 students in Grades 6 to 12, all basketball players, meet with two full-time teachers four days a week at a recreation center. The curriculum is provided and graded by an education center 25 miles away. Its star player, Jeremy Mayfield, signed with Oklahoma.
Some of these institutions recently joined other private schools to form the National Elite Athletic Association. With more than two dozen teams from Los Angeles to Toronto, this conference is seeking a shoe contract and a television deal. Its teams sometimes travel thousands of miles to play in tournaments that often attract more college coaches than fans. Those coaches will pay $100 for booklets of information about the players.
"I believe that our high school associations create mediocrity," said Linzy Davis, a conference founder, who coaches in Stockbridge, Ga. "We have rules in high school associations that say a coach can coach a kid at this time and not at this time. Meanwhile, you have the Europeans that can practice eight hours a day."
The increase in secondary-school options has forged a culture of free agency in prep basketball. Travis George, a senior at Lutheran Christian, left his Boston-area public high school after three-plus years without passing a single core course. The N.C.A.A. requires high school athletes to complete 14 core courses, including four years of English, two years of math and two years of science.
Since the fall of 2004, George has attended six prep schools. He and his coaches say he is on track to qualify for a scholarship at the end of this school year.
"If a kid really wants to, he can find a place that will get him his grades," said Steve Smith, the coach at Oak Hill Academy, a traditional prep powerhouse in Virginia. "That's not good. I believe in kids earning it."
Profit and Opportunity
Basketball-centered schools multiplied after Tracy McGrady leapt to the National Basketball Association from Mount Zion Christian Academy in North Carolina in 1997. He signed a deal with Adidas that gave $300,000 to Mount Zion, which had about 200 students and was not founded as a basketball academy, and nearly $1 million to his coach.
The notion that top players could be a financial boon, combined with the relaxing of N.C.A.A. rules, spawned more basketball academies. In 2000, the N.C.A.A. began allowing high school administrators to determine the legitimacy of their own core courses. Three years later, the N.C.A.A. began allowing students to compensate for low College Board scores with higher grade-point averages.
"Why did these schools come about?" said Mike Byrnes, who has coached for 10 years at 80-year-old Winchendon School in Massachusetts. "Because these kids need to have a higher grade-point average because you can't beat the SAT."
Under these rules, University High School in Miami, a correspondence school with no teachers, classrooms or sports, helped 28 athletes qualify for college. After The Times reported in November that University High gave fast and easy grades to college football prospects, the school shut down. It is under investigation by the Miami-Dade County state attorney's office.
Kevin Lennon, the N.C.A.A.'s vice president for membership services, who is in charge of the task force on secondary schools, said he could not estimate the number of schools abusing the system.
"All we know is that we're seeing more of them," he said.
Mysteries and Discrepancies
Coach Martelli of St. Joseph's said Tommy Lloyd, an assistant at Gonzaga, called last fall asking for directions to Lutheran. Although Coach Schofield said Lutheran sent more than 50 players to Division I in the past eight years, Coach Martelli could not help Mr. Lloyd.
"I have no idea," Coach Martelli, a lifelong resident of Philadelphia, recalled saying. "I've never been there."
The red-brick community center that houses Lutheran has become a running joke in recruiting circles. Interviews with 10 current or former players revealed that all of Lutheran's more than 30 students are college basketball prospects. They have classes in one community center, a converted grocery store on North 17th Street, and practice in another.
Three former Lutheran students — Roosevelt Lee, Jamual Warren and Bobby Maze — echoed Phil Jones in saying that they were not required to attend classes and that Coach Schofield was their only instructor. Maze said he did no work when he did attend class.
Warren said his mother took him home to Springfield, Mass., after a month because he told her there was no school building.
"I like to get by easy," Warren said, "but not that easy."
Jones, a Brooklyn native, is a senior at Laurinburg Prep in North Carolina. He said he was glad he left Lutheran because universities like Kansas, Virginia Tech and Kentucky indicated that they could not recruit him there.
Lee and Warren did not qualify for Division I scholarships out of high school; they now attend Globe Institute of Technology, a junior college in Manhattan. Lee said that in one month at Lutheran, he received credit for five courses, earning all B's, although he never took a test, attended a class or received instruction.
Each day at Eldon Academy in Michigan, Dewayne Walker could sleep till 11 a.m., practice basketball for 90 minutes and never spend more than two hours in class. He said that the only other students were his teammates, that his only teacher was also his coach. "I'm not a Harvard-type person," Walker said, "but I thought it would be a lot more work."
Justin Gardenhire laughed when recalling his classes at Redemption Christian Academy in Troy, N.Y., where many high school students are basketball players. Gardenhire said the school was so disorganized, a Spanish class one day would be French the next. "We had a spelling class," Gardenhire said. "I was like, 'Come on, are you serious?' "
Phil Jones attended Lutheran Christian Academy, an unaccredited private high school in Philadelphia where, he said, all of the students were basketball players. In his seven months there, he said, class consisted of the coach, Darryl Schofield, giving workbooks to the students to fill out. "I thought prep school was supposed to be hard," Jones said.
In the past two years, these young men attended unusual institutions — some called prep schools, some called learning centers — where all or most of the students were highly regarded basketball players. These athletes were trying to raise their grades to compensate for poor College Board scores or trying to gain attention from major-college coaches.
An investigation by The New York Times found more than a dozen of these institutions, some of which closed soon after opening. The Times found that at least 200 players had enrolled at such places in the past 10 years and that dozens had gone on to play at N.C.A.A. Division I universities like Mississippi State, George Washington, Georgetown and Texas-El Paso.
"I would say that in my 21 years, the number of those schools has quadrupled, and I would put schools in quotation marks," Phil Martelli, the men's basketball coach at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, said. "They're not all academic institutions."
The National Collegiate Athletic Association acknowledges that it has not acted as such places have proliferated. For years, its Clearinghouse has approved transcripts from these institutions without questioning them.
Until revelations last year about a diploma mill in Florida and concerns about other schools like it, the N.C.A.A. chose not to police high schools. Although the N.C.A.A. recently commissioned a task force charged with curbing academic abuse, it still faces the tricky task of separating the legitimate from the nonlegitimate schools.
The Times found several schools with curious student populations.
¶Genesis One Christian Academy in Mendenhall, Miss.: Two years ago, this kindergarten-to-Grade 8 school added a high school and a Grade 13, for basketball players who did not graduate to raise their grade-point averages. At least 33 of about 40 students at the unaccredited high school play basketball, and its stars have signed letters of intent to attend Oklahoma State, Arkansas and Alabama.
¶Boys to Men Academy in Chicago: The student body consists of 16 basketball players, who can earn credit for the equivalent of eight high school core courses in a year by studying online through an accredited correspondence school.
¶Rise Academy in Philadelphia: Opened last fall, it outsources lessons to others, including Lutheran Christian and two online high schools.
¶God's Academy in Irving, Tex.: A summer basketball coach started with three students in August. Now 40 students in Grades 6 to 12, all basketball players, meet with two full-time teachers four days a week at a recreation center. The curriculum is provided and graded by an education center 25 miles away. Its star player, Jeremy Mayfield, signed with Oklahoma.
Some of these institutions recently joined other private schools to form the National Elite Athletic Association. With more than two dozen teams from Los Angeles to Toronto, this conference is seeking a shoe contract and a television deal. Its teams sometimes travel thousands of miles to play in tournaments that often attract more college coaches than fans. Those coaches will pay $100 for booklets of information about the players.
"I believe that our high school associations create mediocrity," said Linzy Davis, a conference founder, who coaches in Stockbridge, Ga. "We have rules in high school associations that say a coach can coach a kid at this time and not at this time. Meanwhile, you have the Europeans that can practice eight hours a day."
The increase in secondary-school options has forged a culture of free agency in prep basketball. Travis George, a senior at Lutheran Christian, left his Boston-area public high school after three-plus years without passing a single core course. The N.C.A.A. requires high school athletes to complete 14 core courses, including four years of English, two years of math and two years of science.
Since the fall of 2004, George has attended six prep schools. He and his coaches say he is on track to qualify for a scholarship at the end of this school year.
"If a kid really wants to, he can find a place that will get him his grades," said Steve Smith, the coach at Oak Hill Academy, a traditional prep powerhouse in Virginia. "That's not good. I believe in kids earning it."
Profit and Opportunity
Basketball-centered schools multiplied after Tracy McGrady leapt to the National Basketball Association from Mount Zion Christian Academy in North Carolina in 1997. He signed a deal with Adidas that gave $300,000 to Mount Zion, which had about 200 students and was not founded as a basketball academy, and nearly $1 million to his coach.
The notion that top players could be a financial boon, combined with the relaxing of N.C.A.A. rules, spawned more basketball academies. In 2000, the N.C.A.A. began allowing high school administrators to determine the legitimacy of their own core courses. Three years later, the N.C.A.A. began allowing students to compensate for low College Board scores with higher grade-point averages.
"Why did these schools come about?" said Mike Byrnes, who has coached for 10 years at 80-year-old Winchendon School in Massachusetts. "Because these kids need to have a higher grade-point average because you can't beat the SAT."
Under these rules, University High School in Miami, a correspondence school with no teachers, classrooms or sports, helped 28 athletes qualify for college. After The Times reported in November that University High gave fast and easy grades to college football prospects, the school shut down. It is under investigation by the Miami-Dade County state attorney's office.
Kevin Lennon, the N.C.A.A.'s vice president for membership services, who is in charge of the task force on secondary schools, said he could not estimate the number of schools abusing the system.
"All we know is that we're seeing more of them," he said.
Mysteries and Discrepancies
Coach Martelli of St. Joseph's said Tommy Lloyd, an assistant at Gonzaga, called last fall asking for directions to Lutheran. Although Coach Schofield said Lutheran sent more than 50 players to Division I in the past eight years, Coach Martelli could not help Mr. Lloyd.
"I have no idea," Coach Martelli, a lifelong resident of Philadelphia, recalled saying. "I've never been there."
The red-brick community center that houses Lutheran has become a running joke in recruiting circles. Interviews with 10 current or former players revealed that all of Lutheran's more than 30 students are college basketball prospects. They have classes in one community center, a converted grocery store on North 17th Street, and practice in another.
Three former Lutheran students — Roosevelt Lee, Jamual Warren and Bobby Maze — echoed Phil Jones in saying that they were not required to attend classes and that Coach Schofield was their only instructor. Maze said he did no work when he did attend class.
Warren said his mother took him home to Springfield, Mass., after a month because he told her there was no school building.
"I like to get by easy," Warren said, "but not that easy."
Jones, a Brooklyn native, is a senior at Laurinburg Prep in North Carolina. He said he was glad he left Lutheran because universities like Kansas, Virginia Tech and Kentucky indicated that they could not recruit him there.
Lee and Warren did not qualify for Division I scholarships out of high school; they now attend Globe Institute of Technology, a junior college in Manhattan. Lee said that in one month at Lutheran, he received credit for five courses, earning all B's, although he never took a test, attended a class or received instruction.