Hoop Dreams Soar At The Y

While Yale battled Harvard at the Bowl, another big match-up took place up the road at the YMCA Youth Center, between UNC and Kansas.

No, the renowned UNC-Chapel Hill Tarheels and the Kansas Jayhawks didn’t come to town to play at the YMCA. New Haven youth, hoping to keep their hoop dreams alive in a town, suited up as both teams during a season-ending match in the center’s new fall basketball league.

The fall league — and a winter basketball league starting up in January — is the brainchild of Christian Vick.

Vick, a Washington D.C. native who went to Quinnipiac University on a full basketball scholarship, played professional basketball abroad. He went on to become an author and a journalist who now manages the Sports Debate Network.

Four months ago he was hired as the YMCA basketball coach. When he started, 11 boys regularly came to play basketball as part of the Y’s free, walk-in basketball program. During Coach Vick’s tenure, the number of boys who regularly drop in at the center to hoop has soared to145.

Jose Guzman, 14, and Marvin Mackey, 17, both Career High students, were among the 11 who were often at the Y’s gym this fall. Mackey has been coming to the center since he was in the seventh grade; he said that there had never been as many players as there are now since Coach Vick showed up. Michael Lopez, 16, a student at Eli Whitney, heard that the Y was a good place to play and started coming to the center about four months ago. Word of mouth has been bringing players in the doors of the downtown center.

Four months ago Guzman and Mackey pretty much had the gym to themselves. Now both courts at the center are often bursting with ballplayers. Guzman said people have been drawn in by having a safe, dedicated place to play and by opportunities to play college basketball and even beyond.

“He made it better,” Guzman said of Coach Vick. ​“He added more rules. It’s not like sloppy basketball; you gotta be serious in this gym. That’s the only way to get better.”

Those rules look like an ethos of sportsmanship. Yes, basketball is competitive, Vick said. But it also involves camaraderie.

“When a player falls down, you help him get up,” Vick said.

The boys in the league can often be seen shaking hands with Coach Vick and each other. Big obvious fouls during games didn’t end in shoving matches Saturday.

Trash talk was at a minimum even on the sidelines; teams that had been knocked out of the tourney earlier in the day hung around to watch their friends play. Discipline problems don’t get you kicked out of the program and the center but they can get you benched from a game, just as in professional basketball.

Guzman led UNC to the championship game Saturday afternoon but was unable to overcome the Kansas team lead by Avery Robinson. Kansas won 54 to 41. The boys who lost were bummed but they shook hands with the winners before heading in their various directions exemplifying the rules that Guzman mentioned.

Vick said high school basketball in New Haven is competitive enough that most students never get to play for their high school team. For many of the players who don’t make the cut, their basketball playing days are restricted to pickup games in their neighborhoods if they have a court. (The city has embarked on a project that has refurbished several basketball courts throughout the city. Read about that here.) Once it gets cold they’re further restricted if they have no access to an indoor place to play and improve.

That’s where the Y’s basketball program comes in. The open gym program operates two hours a day, Monday through Friday. It gives the boys a place to play safely. The league, which has had games every Saturday for the last five weeks, gives them a chance to sharpen their skills. And possibly catch the eye of a recruiter. Vick credited YMCA Executive Director Emily Jackson and pre-school Director Melanie Billings for catching his vision for the league, noting that he could not have pulled it off without their support.

“We’ve had college coaches here, and two of our players are being recruited directly out of this program, which is ironic because two of those players aren’t considered good enough to play at their high schools,” Vick said.

Coach Vick doesn’t allow the league players pick their teams by neighborhood, school affiliation, or even by skill. Actually, he didn’t let them pick teams at all. They all had to go through a combine for the fall league and were assigned a team.

It wasn’t an accident that the boys were playing for teams named for powerhouse basketball programs like UNC-Chapel Hill and the University of Kansas Saturday. That’s to get them thinking about going to college. Vick has hopes of establishing a men’s league at the Y along with the coming winter league for the boys. He still has contacts with agents and managers. And he’s encouraging standout players at city high schools to coach.

“Eventually, you will get to an age where your peer or somebody who is your age or younger than you, is supervising you,” he said. ​“That’s part of growing up.”

Vick sees the program and its league becoming ​“the largest collection of basketball players” in the city. That will take money. This first fall league was sponsored by Stop & Shop and the New Alliance Foundation, which provided uniforms. The police department has helped out, too. Making the league a year-round venture and adding an adult league will take more grants and partnerships.

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life,” Vick reflected, ​“but to give young people who don’t get the same opportunity as the Lebron Jameses of the world a chance at an education, to go somewhere and be safe with their friends and keep them out of at-risk situations and give them somewhere to go where they can be accepted, is the most important thing I’ve done in my life.”