Summer of hoops
 | posted by MichelleSmith, a Women Talk Sports blogger About MichelleSmith: I've been a sportswriter in the Bay Area for 20 years, covering everything from rugby to rowing. I have covered women's basketball for the past 14 years in newspapers, magazines and in children's book...more |
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Several years ago, my sports editors at the San Francisco Chronicle were benevolent enough to send me up to Portland to see the End of the Trail girls basketball tournament.
The annual AAU tournament, which takes place in Oregon City in the week following 4th of July, features a couple of hundred teams and couple of thousand girls in a recruiting showcase that draws women’s college coaches from every level of the game.
For someone who had covered women’s basketball for nearly than a decade at that point, it was an eye-opening experience.
My coverage of these young women’s careers had always started after they’d gotten to college. As far as I was concerned, they had been hatched, arriving as fully formed, though collegiately inexperienced players.
The arduous, time-consuming process that landed them in school was never really my concern. But attending that tournament changed my perspective.
It is a long, sometimes complicated road to hand out Division I basketball scholarships. The process of being recruited doesn’t look easy, and frankly, probably not always that pleasurable. Phone calls, text messages, visits, developing relationships with coaches that often end with a teenager having to tell a disappointed adult that they’ve made a choice to go to another school. And handful of athletes through the years have talked about the release and relief at the end of the their recruitments, giving a whole new significance to signing day.
The girls are in the gym most of the summer, missing time with friends and vacation opportunities with family from the time they are in middle school, managing intense travel schedules, maximizing their exposure at these national events and playing in pressure-packed situations in front of coaches who will determine their future in basketball.
It’s no wonder both that some athletes commit so early – to put a merciful end to the process – and that others wait so long to make what must be a difficult decision, especially for the top prospects.
My first trip to End of the Trail four years ago included a lengthy interview with then high school senior-to-be Jayne Appel and her family. Appel was one of the most hotly recruited players in the nation in the home stretch of her recruitment.
Appel was making her last rounds on the AAU circuit and was being followed from game to game by both Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer and Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma, the coaches of the two teams in which she’d narrowed her choices.
At times, Auriemma and VanDerveer sat together and chatted while watching Appel,, a dynamic I found fascinating.
The other notable experience of that trip was sitting in the Oregon City gym, waiting to watch the team that featured now Tennnessee guard Angie Bjorklund. Bjorklund, who would be entering her junior season, hadn’t committed to Pat Summitt’s program yet had clearly had not done much narrowing at all, because her Thursday afternoon game was a who’s who of the women’s game.
One after another, in walked Summitt and Notre Dame’s Muffet McGraw, Oklahoma’s Sherri Coale and Vanderbilt’s Melanie Balcomb, Georgia’s Andy Landers and Baylor’s Kim Mulkey. VanDerveer and Auriemma stuck around to watch as well, sitting adjacent to a barrier of plastic ribbon that separates the players and their families from the folks trying to convince them to come to their school and spend four or five years.
Earlier this week, on a trip to see a couple of Northwest college campuses with my 15-year-old daughter, I made a pit stop in Oregon City to catch a couple of games.
It was the same as I remembered it.
A non-stop schedule of basketball, the gymnasium at “new” Oregon City High School motoring with games on both courts – one upstairs auxiliary court and the main gym. Brackets taped to the walls loaded with teams.
Players from California and Oregon and Colorado – along with parents and coaches and tag-along friends – moving through the halls, buying nachos and t-shirts.
In the middle of the main gym at Oregon City this evening, on the left side of the gym, an entire section divided off by yellow caution tape with signs that read: College Coaches Only.
With the Cal Swish Black team, whose roster includes a handful of top prospects, taking the court at 8:45 p.m., it became a high-profile affair in the stands once again, with Coale in the bleachers along with Cal’s Joanne Boyle, new Oregon coach Paul Westhead and UCLA’s Nikki Caldwell, along with staff members from USC, Louisville, Arizona State and Kansas State.
Appel, who I have covered now throughout her college career at Stanford, is going to be a senior this fall and I wonder sometimes what she must think about the process that brought her to Stanford and how quickly the years have passed since.
The college recruiting process is, in many ways, the last time these players get to choose their basketball paths. WNBA teams will draft some players without any regard to where they want to be, how far away their family is.
Others will try out for USA teams, their status dependent on somebody else’s assessment of their abilities.
Some players will sign overseas contracts in which only the top players get any true input with regard to playing time or how much they will be paid.
The vast majority of others will see their basketball careers end and it won’t be their choice at all, but a natural conclusion.
In Oregon, the players are still in the driver’s seat. But the car is moving really fast.
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- Filed Under:
- Basketball, Sports, College, High School, Student-Athlete, Recruiting, WNBA, W College Hoops
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bobbk
The EOT is one of the great Sporting events for real fans. Nice write up.
Friday, July 10, 2009 at 1:40pm PDT